by Isabel Wolff
Our relief at having somewhere to live soon gave way to dismay. Crowds of local Dutch used to gather at the fence, shouting abuse. They called us ‘uitzuigers’ – leeches, and ‘Indos’. Holland had suffered so much during the Nazi occupation and was now so impoverished that its people didn’t want all these colonials, who had come back with nothing and were now expecting to be fed and housed. To make matters worse, we had double the food rations, and this caused deep resentment because the Dutch had themselves been starved. I used to go with my mother to a local grocery; one day, as she opened her handbag and got out her food stamps, there was furious tut-tutting from the woman behind us.
‘Look at you,’ she shrieked, ‘coming here and asking us to help! While you were sunning yourselves in the tropics we had the Germans. You people should look after yourselves!’ I became very upset, but my mother told me to ignore her and we quickly left; but this kind of incident happened several times, increasing our sense that we were once again isolated and unwanted. But it was worse for the Belandas who, in addition to this, suffered racial abuse.
I was enrolled in a local high school where, like the other repatriates, we were given a ‘bridging’ education to try and fill in the huge gaps in our learning. Sometimes, another evacuee, Carola, would try to explain to our classmates what we had experienced under the Japanese, but they didn’t want to know.
‘At least you were warm,’ they would say. ‘You weren’t freezing like we were. Or eating tulip bulbs or raw beets, or hiding in a ditch or being sent to die in Auschwitz like all our Jewish friends were.’
To which there could be no answer. They’d suffered in their way, and we in ours, but where the Dutch children talked openly and volubly about the war, we now knew to keep quiet. As I cycled to school each morning, past scorched and shattered trees, steering my wheels around holes left by shells and grenades, I vowed to look only to the future.
We were in Nijmegen for a year. Then we moved into a village closer to Rotterdam, where we stayed in the basement of a large villa. These were ‘contract pensions’ in which the Dutch government paid the owners of large houses to open up part of their homes to evacuees. Usually there was just one room per family. We were lucky. We had two rooms, and our own small bathroom; there was also a large garden, fragrant with roses. I used to watch my mother walking about in it and I knew that she was thinking about her garden at Tempat Sungai.
During the day I didn’t think about the plantation; but it would return to me in my dreams and I’d travel back there on a wave of memory. I’d be sitting on the verandah with my mother and Peter, watching the tjik-tjaks come out, or I’d be playing with Flora or riding Sweetie, or walking through the rubber forest with my father, trying to match his long strides. He had seemed a giant to me then, but now seemed shrunken and old, a shadow of the man that he’d been.
My father wanted to work but most of the jobs to be had were labouring jobs, to rebuild the shattered city, and he was quite unfit for this. The coal dust inside the mine, and the freezing conditions outside it, not to mention the lingering effects of being starved almost to death, had left him with fragile health.
We often heard from the Jochens, who were by now in Fremantle in west Australia, where Wil had cousins. Wil helped my father get the pension due to him from the Dutch agricultural company that had owned the plantation; to my father’s surprise it was enough for us to live on, albeit modestly. Wil also mentioned the growing demands for war reparations from Japan, but we knew that this, if it ever happened, would be years, if not decades, away.
I remember my parents avidly following the coverage of the War Crimes Tribunal in September 1946. When we heard that Konichi Sonei had been sentenced to death, we felt that the suffering of thousands of innocent women and children had been avenged; and as I thought of him facing the Dutch firing squad, I could not summon one shred of pity for the man.
Even as late as 1948, the war for independence still raged. But in 1949 the flag of the Indonesian Republic was raised over the archipelago and the last Dutch officials left.
In that year my grandmother died. She had left her apartment to my mother and this now became our home. I attended the Erasmiaans School, and now, at sixteen, I tried to put the war years behind me. My mother’s relationship with me had improved, inasmuch as she was still a concerned mother, doing her best. But deep down her resentment towards me remained and at times I saw it in her expression, just a glance, and I felt accused all over again. I had nightmares about the camps. In these dark dreams I saw again the train journey to Tjideng, and Flora’s grey face, and emaciated women lined up under a full moon, their children curled at their feet. But I drew comfort from my father, who I knew still loved me unequivocally. He told me to look only ahead.
What should I do with my life? I wondered. Should I become a teacher, or a nurse? Perhaps I could train to be an interpreter – thanks to Irene my English was good. With my planter’s background I became drawn to the idea of working in the flower trade, as the Dutch bulb industry was rapidly reviving.
In September 1949 I went with a school friend, Mina, to a dance in a new music hall on Delft Street, where we jived to the Andrews Sisters and Buddy Clark. There were some boys there from our school, and while Mina was talking to one of them, an attractive man, two or three years older than I was, approached me. He asked me if I spoke English, so I said that I did. He then told me that his name was Harold and that he’d love to dance with some of these girls but didn’t know how to ask them in Dutch. Could I help him?
‘Of course,’ I answered. ‘It’s “Wilt u met me dansen?” Or you could, if you like, say “Ik zou graag met u willen dansen?” Either would be fine.’
‘Your English is very good,’ he told me. ‘Or are you English?’
‘No, but I grew up hearing it. Anyway, now you know what to say and … good luck.’
‘So what I have to say is …’ Harold frowned as he tried to remember. ‘Will you mit me … dancern?’ He smiled at me. ‘And what should they say in reply?’
‘Well, that all depends on how they feel. If it were me, I’d say Ik zou graag – “I’d be delighted”.’
Harold grinned, then offered me his arm. ‘I was hoping you’d say that!’
I laughed as we took to the floor.
Harold told me that he was a sub-lieutenant in the British Navy, and was in Rotterdam with HMS Vanguard, on which he would serve for another two years.
‘What will you do after that?’ I asked as we sat the next dance out.
‘I’ll go and help run the family farm. It’s in Cornwall.’
‘Is it a flower farm?’ I asked. ‘Do you grow daffodils?’
‘It’s dairy – but we do have one small field of daffodils that we sell to local shops.’
We danced and talked, and then Harold walked me back home. As we stood outside the building, he asked me if he could take me out for supper one night. I said that I’d have to check with my parents. They gave me permission to go, but only if Harold came up to the apartment to meet them beforehand. So he did, and was charming, and I could see that my parents liked him. He told them that he’d been too young to serve in the war but had joined up as soon as he was sixteen.
‘Why did you choose the navy?’ I asked him later, as we had supper.
‘Because our farm’s by the sea, so I know about boats.’ Then he asked me about the plantation. ‘So you’re a farmer too, Klara.’
‘I suppose I am.’
The night before Harry’s ship was due to leave, we went out one more time. Now he asked me more about what had happened to us on Java. His eyes were full of compassion as I described our lives in the camps. He sat very still as I told him about Peter, and then Flora. I told him about what we ate, and our struggle to grow food, and about my dream of having a walled garden one day.
Harry smiled. ‘You will have one. I know you will.’
‘How?’
‘Because I’m going to build it for you,’ he said.
My parents weren’t worried that I was marrying so young. They wanted me to seize my chance of happiness: they knew too well how easily everything that we love or value can be snatched away. So in May 1952, Harry and I were married in Rotterdam’s Town Hall, one of the few historic buildings to have survived the Luftwaffe. We had a wedding breakfast in a nearby hotel and honeymooned in Devon en route to Cornwall.
I will never forget my first glimpse of Polvarth. I looked at the headlands and coves, the patchwork fields, the light sparkling on the sea, and I drank in lungfuls of the wonderful air. Harry had told me the truth – it was a beautiful place – and I settled happily into my new life.
My parents visited me every spring. In June 1953 they helped me inaugurate the walled garden. It was Coronation Day, and Harry and Seb had just finished building it. We decked it with bunting, and toasted it with champagne. Then my parents helped us to mark out the beds, and my father rolled up his sleeves and he and I planted the peach tree, which has thrived for sixty years.
I’d go to Holland every two years. If I ever tried to talk to my mother about Java she would simply say that she ‘couldn’t remember’. But I’d get out the albums and sometimes she’d come and sit with me and I’d turn the pages, and we’d talk about Tempat Sungai. Gradually she and my father were able to look at the photographs and smile, and in 1955, they went back.
My mother had been in touch with the Netherlands War Graves Commission and in late 1954 she was informed that Peter had been reburied in the Ereveld Pandu cemetery in Bandung. The letter gave the number and location of the plot. So my parents bought second-class tickets on a cruise ship and went there in the following spring. I couldn’t go with them as I was pregnant, but I didn’t need to return to Java to have Peter in my heart. I was trying to put the past behind me, to concentrate on my new life, with Harry, and on the new life that was growing inside me. But my mother wrote to me at the very end of the trip and her letter is among my most treasured possessions.
We travelled there via Suez and Colombo, then went on to Jakarta where we got the train to Bandung. Bandung is so much busier now, Klara, with far more people and cars and commerce. All the old Dutch street names are now in Indonesian, which confused us until we found our bearings. We saw your school and I thought of you and Flora, arm in arm on the steps. Then, since we were near Tjihapit, I took your father to Houtmanstraat, now called Jalaan Supratman, and showed him the house where we lived for that year. As I stood outside it, I remembered all the women and children and fancied that I could hear the noise and tumult all over again. I thought of what a good girl you had been, and of how brave you were, coping in such difficult, and often frightening, circumstances. I felt sad to think of the childhood that you should have had, but which was taken from you.
The following day your father and I got up early and went to Ereveld Pandu. The cemetery is vast, and enclosed within it is the ‘Dutch Field of Honour’ – not so much a field as a vast plain, filled with thousands of identical white crosses that stretch, in perfectly straight rows, as far as the eye can see. Many of the graves are those of civilians who died in the conflict, and as we walked along the neat paths we’d stop, as we noticed on this cross or that, the name of someone we’d once known. We saw the name of your teacher, Miss Vries, and of Mr Uys from Grindlay’s Bank, and of Roelph Smits, Edda’s father. Just as sad was to see ‘Unknown’, which we saw on so many graves. Finally, we came to ‘our’ plot. However much we had prepared for this moment, seeing Peter’s name was a shock. We wept at the inescapable reality of it. Then we laid some pink and white orchids on the grave of our darling boy, who would have been twenty on that day, but who will always be ten. We stood there for a long time, neither of us able to leave; then we each kissed the cross, and walked away. As we did so, we felt no less sad, but comforted to have at least come back to Peter, and seen the place where he rests. Surrounded by so many graves helped me to view what happened to him in a different way – that Peter was simply a victim of circumstance, caught up in the tide of a terrible war. I’m only sorry that in my grief and rage I blamed you, Klara. You will soon be a mother yourself, and I hope that this may help you to understand – and to forgive.
I had one last thing still to do. Your father had been reluctant to go back to the plantation, but he agreed to come with me, and so yesterday we drove through the gates of Tempat Sungai. There was Suliman, waiting to greet us! He looked much the same, though I can’t say as much for the plantation, which is still recovering from the occupation. Most of the forest had been replanted and it was odd seeing so many young trees. It was strange being there, Klara; I half expected to catch a glimpse of you and Peter running down to the stream. Suliman introduced us to the new administrator, Mr Aceh, who kindly invited us to go up to the house. The garden was overgrown, which grieved me, but my beloved cherimoya was still there. Mr Aceh asked us if we’d like to go inside, but we said that we didn’t want to disturb his family. The truth was that we wanted to remember it as it had been. Then Suliman invited us to his home and so we all walked down to the kampong, going slowly because of your father. As we were almost there we saw Jasmine, who ran towards us, hand in hand with Sushila, who is now seven and a lovely little girl – their late blessing. I cried to see Jasmine again. We went into their house and exchanged news in Malay, over tea and spekkoek cake. But as we talked, all I could think of was two small heads, one fair, one dark, bent together on the verandah. Then we heard steps outside and suddenly there was Jaya – a handsome young man of nineteen. He’s studying maths at a college in Garut and hopes to become a civil engineer. Jaya told us how sad he’d been about Peter, and that he often thought of him. I opened the basket I’d been carrying, took out the carefully wrapped parcel, and handed it to him. Puzzled, Jaya undid the string and pulled off the layers of brown paper. As he saw what was inside, he smiled.
TWENTY-TWO
‘Onyx and marble,’ I murmured. I looked away so that Klara wouldn’t see that I was crying.
She nodded, then lowered the letter. ‘Onyx and marble. My mother had bought it in Colombo. She told Jaya that she’d looked at dozens of chess sets, and that this was the most beautiful one that she could find. She explained what had happened to his wooden set, and how upset Peter had been to have to leave it behind. She told Jaya about the promise that she’d made Peter, and said how happy she felt to have kept it at last.’
‘Jaya must have been … very touched.’
‘He was; he promised that he would always treasure it. Then my parents said their goodbyes and drove to Jakarta, to board the ship that would take them home.’
‘What about Arif?’ I asked as Klara put the letter back in the wooden box. ‘Didn’t they see him at the village too?’
Klara shook her head. ‘He’d long since left.’
‘What had happened to him? Did you ever know?’
‘Yes. He’d gone to a technical college in Tasikmalaya, living with relatives while he studied. He’d then been apprenticed to a printing firm, from which he’d gone on to become a typesetter on the Jakarta Post, an English-language newspaper.’
‘And Susan? What about her?’
‘She went to school in Fremantle; then to art college in Perth and became a graphic designer. At twenty-five she married a man she worked with, but he didn’t treat her well and it ended. So there she was, divorced, at twenty-eight, and terribly upset. Her parents told her not to worry – she was still young; she’d be happy again.’
‘I hope she was,’ I murmured.
‘She was.’
Klara opened one of the photo albums, turned the pages, then showed me a photo of a tall dark-haired man standing on a lawn with an attractive blonde woman, in her late thirties, and two girls of about ten and eight.
‘So … that’s Susan,’ I said.
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��It is.’
‘And that’s …’ I looked at Klara, puzzled. ‘Arif?’
‘Yes,’ said Klara, laughing. ‘That was taken in their garden in Rockingham, just outside Perth.’
‘So … how did they …?’
‘Although she and Arif had written to each other for a while, their new lives, inevitably, took over, especially once Susan had married. But she’d never forgotten Arif. She kept thinking about the day he came to Tjideng; the way he’d walked for two weeks to find her, risking bullets and knives. So after her marriage ended, she wrote to him, hoping that his old address would still find him. She had a phone call from him within the week! Arif, who by then spoke English well, left his job and came to Perth, where he worked on the West Australian. He and Sue were married in 1958.’
‘I’m … glad. And did you ever see them again, Klara?’
‘I did. They came to London in ‘65 and I went there with my boys, and we had a very happy reunion with them in Regent’s Park. Arif died in 2004, Susan four years later; but I still exchange Christmas cards with their two girls, Florence and Bea.’
‘And what happened to Wil and Irene?’
‘Wil was stronger than my father, and recovered well enough to work again – he was the general manager of a vineyard near Fremantle.’
‘Another plantation then.’
‘Yes. He and Irene kept in touch with my parents – or with my mother, I should say, because my father died in 1957. After that, my mother came here more often, to be with Henry and Vincent, and with me. This was a time when she and I became close again, and we often spoke about Java. She died in 1978.’