Free The Rice Paper Diaries by Francesca Rhydderch Page B

staring at me in the dark. She didn’t make a sound. The crown of her head smelled of sugar cane.
    The door to the dressing room was flung open, and they came out again, the heavy boots. Their canvas trousers passed the laundry room door, which was still open. In the middle of them was Mrs Elsa, walking in her bare feet. I saw the lace trim bottom of her night gown. As they passed the hall table one of the men lifted an arm and casually pushed the porcelain jug. I heard the smash as it hit the floor.
    The same thing had happened in the apartments all around us. People were being rounded up and herded out of the building. The soldiers shouted all the time, either at their prisoners or at each other, or both. I heard an engine outside, a lorry, or a truck.
    One of them yelled in English: ‘In! Get in!’
    There was the crack of something hard against flesh and bone, a man’s cry. Perhaps he hadn’t moved quickly enough. They must all have been moving quickly after that, because I didn’t hear it again. Doors were shut, a tailgate lifted and bolted into place. The engine chugged some more, shifted gear and moved off down the hill. Other trucks followed it, their tyres crunching through the wreckage from the blown - out cemetery.
    Mari had fallen back to sleep. I kept on staring at the broken - up jigsaw view of the hallway from inside our cocoon. The thousand pieces of the shattered porcelain on the linoleum; the photographs on the wall above. There was one of Mrs Elsa and the captain standing in a field with a man and woman with white hair. Even though the picture was black and white, you could tell that the plants billowing out in the wind around them had grown from rapeseed. The flowers were so full and ripe they had blurred into one velvet cloud under the glass. Father would have been proud of such a good crop. No wonder the white - haired man was grinning, his hand on the belly of a tractor. Mrs Elsa looked taller than the rest of them, as if she had been cut out of a magazine and glued onto the picture.
    I wasn’t afraid any more. The men had gone.
    My arms and legs were stiff from being curled up in the laundry basket with Mari. I limped straight into Mrs Elsa’s dressing room. Her clothes had been pulled out of closets and armoires and ripped apart or thrown to the floor and stamped on under their dirty boots. Her plum - coloured silk evening gown had been cut open down the middle. A white chiffon dress had mud on the tunic. Printed blouses had been torn off their hangers and thrown all over the room, as if the men had been looking for something.
    I went over to the dressing table. Mrs Elsa’s jewellery box was open. She didn’t wear much jewellery: ‘You can’t take it with you, can you?’ was one of her favourite phrases. It was what she always said when Lam was helping her to get ready for a dinner at the Peninsula, or cocktails at the Gloucester. Lam said it meant there was no point spending big money on small items you’ll have to leave behind when you die. But Mrs Elsa was proud of her gold - and - diamond watch, and her engagement ring, a ruby set into a band that she said was made of something called Welsh gold. It was so pale that it had looked almost silver against the black velvet of the box. It wasn’t there now. The box was empty.
    Remember the studio photograph Lam and I sent home to you, Third Sister, how you admired our black - and - white uniforms? You were awed by the fake flowers in vases that stood on a column between us, and the painted curtain that set the scene behind, the oily glimmer of the moon on the bark of a goat - horn tree. But it was our jewels you were most proud of, wasn’t it? We both wore identical rings, and a bracelet on one arm, mine on my right, and Lam’s on her left. Well, let me tell you a secret. Those jewels weren’t paid for by Mrs Elsa and the captain. They weren’t given to us in return for our hard work. They were painted on by the photographer’s