They’ve parked me under the pine trees in the shade and it’s beautiful here. I have the background company of cicadas, a cool breeze, and I can see everyone on the beach. Before she ran off into the sea my niece Serena sloshed anti mozzy stuff all over me, so I’m not going to get bitten to pieces like last time.

My sister Maggie and her husband Terry have hired a special disability van with a lift for my wheelchair. The best thing about it is I can see out of the windows because they’re big and low and it’s amazing to see where I’m going for a change! So far this is a great holiday and I’m looking forward to dinner tonight – we sit outside at the taverna and if my hands make food go flying nobody cares, it just lands on the earth. And there’s music so if I inadvertently make odd sounds I don’t disturb anyone either.

Thinking about the flashy hired van here reminds me of Jamie’s van, our family’s first van, and I have to laugh! I’ll tell you about it in a minute, but right now I’m watching four muscular young Greek men playing a bat and ball game on the sand. They’re very energetic: leaping about athletically, whacking the ball to each other and falling about trying to reach it – it’s fun to watch! I try to put myself in their bodies to discover what it might feel like to be strong and gleaming with sweat in the sun… Actually I can’t imagine it.

So – back to Jamie’s van. Jamie is my oldest brother – I’m the youngest of seven siblings by the way, five brothers, one sister and me. Kenny is the next oldest and far more informative – ‘Jamie is a doer and Kenny is a thinker’, Mam says. So Kenny tells me Mam had problems when she was having me, she nearly miscarried me several times but she held onto me fiercely and wouldn’t let me go even when Da said she should give up. When I was born Da wasn’t there so her brother, Uncle Joseph, came with Mam to the hospital and when he held me, with my bent and jerky arms and legs, Kenny said Uncle Joe looked into my eyes and declared:

“This little lad has a happy disposition, Martha!”

“God has blessed him,” replied my mother firmly.

When I was five my brother Jamie was 17 so he took his driving test and bought this old van. It was scratched and battered but it had eight seats, with a space at the back for my wheelchair. Jamie concocted a harness for me with webbing straps which went around me like a cocoon so my cerebral palsy didn’t make me bash my hands and feet into the sides of the van. It was cosy in there but there weren’t any windows so I was hurtling round corners without seeing a thing! Mam sat in the front next to Jamie and the rest of them just piled in. I loved it with all of us together, talking and laughing! Jamie took us to so many places and wherever we went one of them pushed me along and we certainly saw some sights. And sometimes people stared at me as I jerked and twitched, and my siblings would say rude things to them.

That was before I could speak properly so sometimes they would just invent terrible things for me to say: ‘Arno says this or Arno says that…’ then fall about laughing. Mam had christened me Arnold after Arnold Schwarzeneggar because he is strong and God goes with him, she said, like He does me.

Da never came on our outings. We kids were scared of Da but I don’t know why, he was never cruel to us. He was more just “not there” somehow. He worked on the buildings all day then he had his tea on his own for peace and quiet, he said, and then he went to the pub with his mates to unwind, with “a game of darts and a couple.” Then he came home to bed. He was a good man: he supported his family and paid the rent. But he was a ghost of a father. Jamie turned into the man of the house by the time he was 15 and left school to start working and save up for our van. Jamie is a big man, bigger than Da. And when I turned 14 Da went back ‘home’, as he called it, back to Connemara. We were all born in Liverpool so we stayed where we were and Mam went over on the ferry to visit him now and again, sometimes with one or other of us, but she never took me.

All this remembering is making me a bit tearful, so I concentrate on watching Serena swim far out and there’s my brother-in-law Terry even farther, clinging to the yellow ball marking the edge of the swimming area. I don’t know what it’s like: I’ve never been in the sea. My darling sister Maggie is bobbing around in the shallows: she’s met up with a couple of other ladies which is typical, and they’re all non-stop talking. That’s Maggie’s forte.

The young Greek men have finished their game and come over to the wall under the trees, carrying ice cold cans of beer. One sits on the wall beside me and smiles, then gets out his packet of cigs and lights one. He glances at me.

“Want a cigarette?” he asks me, shaking the pack so one bounces out.

I gather myself to speak. I spent five years with my speech therapist learning to speak so it better damn work!

“I’ve never had one,” I say. It sounds intelligible, to me anyway.

“Excuse me?”

“I never had a cigarette before,” I say slowly, trying to make it clearer.

He laughs, “Oh! Never before! Then you try!” he says, taking the cigarette from his mouth to pass it to me. I try to take it, but my hand jerks away from me and I accidentally knock it sideways. He grabs it; he can see I look stricken.

“Ochi problema! – no problem!” he says, and he puts it to my lips and tells me to breathe it in. I do and I cough like nobody’s business and he pats my back and his friends all gather round and also pat me on the back, and give me some of their beer to drink.

It’s nice to be with these friendly young men, chatting to each other in Greek and sometimes saying something in English to me. They share sips of beer with me, which make me feel warm. Very different from the occasional Guinness my brothers drink. Then they decide to go and cool off in the sea.

“You want to go in the sea?” asks the one who’d first spoken to me – Stelios is his name. I can’t believe it. Can’t they see I have cerebral palsy, in other words, I am a spastic? I’m amazed enough, truth be told, that they talk to me at all, let alone so easily accept me and let me join in with them.

So I say yes! Yes! I would like to go in the sea with them, I would, more than anything I have ever been asked. And I would like to have a beer with them afterwards, and a cigarette too! Why not? They unclip the belts around my middle, my legs and my chest and lift me out of the chair. I exert all my strength to try and keep my limbs still, but it doesn’t seem to bother them that I flail around, because I’m laughing and happy – beyond happy really. They take off my tee shirt and three of them carry me in my shorts carefully into the sea, then they lower my legs in first, holding me under my arms to gently let me slide onto the sand beneath the clear blue water. Never in my life have I felt such a feeling! The cool water and the sand beneath me! There are little fish! The men are strong, they hold me up. The water ripples around me. I taste the salt water on my fingers. Christos, another guy, splashes me a little, playfully, and a few drops of the sea land on my nose and make me take a shocked breath, and I let my legs freely jerk and thrash as they will, laughing and crying at the same time, and the young men encourage me, kindly.

Then suddenly here are Maggie and Serena, running towards me through the shallows panicking – until they see my face “suffused with joy,” is what Serena says, so they sit in the water beside us. This holiday’s beyond my wildest dreams and if I never have another one, the memory of this one will last me my lifetime.

Mam is right. God has blessed me.

For a couple of years, when we were young teenagers, my school friend Caroline and I went to the island of Lan Tau to spend a fortnight with her father. We would catch the ferry from Queen’s Pier and bob across the sea, leaving the raucous noise of Hong Kong behind for the large, peaceful and pastoral haven that was Lan Tau Island in those days, with very few tarmac roads and very few people.

Caroline’s Dad was a Government Waterworks Engineer at the time, and he and his men were building an enormous reservoir to augment the supplies to Hong Kong in the summer. So many people had fled to Hong Kong from China that Hong Kong’s own reservoirs’ reserves were inadequate and for several summers we only had four hour’s water supply every four days, most of which the Hong Kong Government had to buy from China. It was an uneasy arrangement and depended uncomfortably on the whims of Mao’s Government. Furthermore people were getting fed up with collecting water from standpipes at 6.00 o’clock in the morning and with China threatening not to supply us at all, annoyingly frequently.

So Caroline’s Dad and his team were busy on Lan Tau Island, building locks, dams, walls and other mighty things involving diggers and huge holes and enormous pipes, none of whose functions I can either recall or understand, now or then. I do remember staring blankly at it all from the top of a huge bank of earth, dressed in an adored pair of denim shorts and a tee shirt and longing to get back to the beach, while Caroline’s Dad stood stockily in his long white shorts and open neck shirt explaining things to us. He had a thick streaky shock of blond hair, a tanned face and bright blue eyes, and spoke with a strong Scottish accent. We would dutifully stand there listening to him, for we both admired and respected him. He was kind and fair but quite authoritarian so that as young teenagers we felt free to dream and listen to our music, living safely and easily within his parameters.

It was the beach and the sea that Caroline and I loved. We would lean our arms across the wide, cool, stone windowsill of our bedroom in her Dad’s house, the big steel ceiling fan whirring unnoticed above our heads, and gaze down the rocky path through the pines to the sea. The green, tree-clad land curved around in a great arc as if it were capturing the blue-green water in the arms of its silvery beach: five miles long, empty, beckoning and blisteringly hot. We would spend our afternoons lying on the white sand in a soporific daze beside our abandoned homework, idling the time away as teenage girls do, speculating on various boys at school and bursting into vacuous giggles over nothing. We spent hours lolling around in the sea, as brown as berries, as fit as any young and free creatures and in a way, waiting for our lives to begin.

Sometimes Caroline’s Dad would tell us to put on our ‘glad rags’ as he was going to take us with him to the little town of Silvermine Bay. We rushed about dressing ourselves up and then jumped into the back of his rough and seatless old Landrover. We stood there clinging to the overhead railings as he lurched and swayed at speed down the uneven track to the town, through the peppery scented pines, the buzzing cicadas, the sun going down over the sea to the right, the mountains to the left, we laughing and shrieking and he occasionally shouting “hang on girls!” The evening drew in, the air was soft and scented. The lethargy of the day left us and high spirits overtook us all.

Eventually we would draw in to Silvermine Bay, then something resembling a three-horse town in the Wild West. I can’t imagine how it is now. A few little streets, a few shops, a rough wooden bridge over the stream, a few open-air restaurants serving wonderful Chinese food al fresco and a few bars. One of these was fondly known as “The Club” by the Waterworks men. There was a jukebox which Caroline’s Dad gave us few coins to play on while he drank beer, played darts or cards and horsed around. He would buy us some crisps and a Green Spot orangeade each and we watched and listened to the men. At weekends some highly blond and brown-tanned women would sometimes appear. They laughed and smoked and we listened to the increasingly bawdy larking

about between the men and women, until finally he decided that was enough, would round us up and home we would go in the Landrover.

This was the very best part of the evening and why I wanted to come with him so much. Caroline’s Dad drove home very slowly along the track, sometimes singing quietly, mostly not. The stars were dense in the night sky, as if they were so close and bright they were in danger of falling on to us. The incessant zizz zizz zizz of the cicadas accompanied us as we stood in the back of the vehicle, holding onto the poles at the side and gazing up at the magnificent night sky. The Landrover swayed slowly along the track and we heard his nice baritone voice intermittently but we girls were silent, sniffing the pine-scented air and breathing the smell of the sea. There were no lights, no cars; Caroline’s Dad after a few beers drove gently along. Tears came to my eyes at the beauty of the night; spending two weeks doing little with Caroline was worth it just for this. Even now I can cast myself back to those times: her Dad at the wheel in a rather sweat-stained pink shirt, Caroline and I leaning together as we hung on to the rails of the Landrover swinging slowly down the track, with the sound of “You Take the High Road” hummed under his breath.

The bungalow Caroline’s Dad lived in was stark, in the way a man’s house is without a woman. No rugs graced the stone floor, no flowers on the table, and no curtains at the windows. Her Mum allegedly hated Lan Tau. It was, she said, too hot, too full of insects, too boring and too remote. And there were snakes, that was true. This suited all of us very well; she stayed in a semi-constant state of high dudgeon in their air-conditioned flat in Hong Kong and we enjoyed the peace and calm without her. Fortunately our needs were in fact catered for, because the Government had provided an Amah to cook and clean and she it was who would be waiting for us as we drove up from our evening out. She would meet us with a beaming smile on her face, her long black pigtail down her back bobbing as she greeted us, dressed as was usual in those days in a white Chinese side-buttoned top and loose black trousers. She would bring us drinks and peanuts, a San Miguel beer for Caroline’s Dad and two Green Spots for us. The three of us would sit on the verandah with our feet up on the railing, gazing at the sea and stars, cogitating the meaning of life, while I covertly glanced at the golden hairs on Caroline’s Dad’s brown legs, glinting in the light of the moon.

Sadly, as all idylls must, these periods of peaceful delight would come to an inevitable end. We girls would slump morosely on the wooden benches of the ferry back to Hong Kong, surrounded by our various tatty bags of belongings, as it pulled away from Lan Tau pier and chugged out to sea. Slowly the great green island of Lan Tau slipped away from us, as we glumly watched the tiny moving dot that was Caroline’s Dad’s Landrover weaving its way along the slash of red that was the track along the base of the mountain, he going his way and we going ours.

Farewell, farewell, peace of mind and heart.

Mary Thomas Levycky was born in Surrey but grew up in Hong Kong where she also met her first husband, a Foreign Correspondent for Reuters. Consequently Mary has lived in many different countries, and says,

“I wrote my first book aged 11 on a P&O ship travelling from Hong Kong to Southampton. I can’t stop writing, particularly stories based where I’ve lived, especially HK, India and Africa. On our return to Hong Kong I wrote and presented a daily breakfast show for RTHK, the English language radio station, finished my stint at Hong Kong University, worked as a Schools Counsellor, during which time I also established the English language Samaritans in HK at the request of Chad Varah, its founder. And with two RTHK colleagues formed a fun little company training corporate CEO’s to present themselves properly on TV interviews, which they were remarkably bad at doing!”

“Back in London for 5 years I and my boss Colin Murison Small (of Small World) wrote the annual Travel Contacts Directory covering 140 countries’ offerings for corporate/business travellers. This also involved a lot of travelling! Sadly many we featured, such as Yemen, can no longer be safely visited.”

Currently she lives in Plymouth with her second husband Tony after her first husband died, and has been a long term member of PWG. Her stories have appeared in several different anthologies.

Mary has published a collection of stories about her life growing up in Hong Kong, called “Hong Kong: Memories, Stories and Anecdotes of My Colonial Childhood, 1955-1968.” which is mainly lighthearted and features her lively and loving family, available on Amazon.

She adds, “I love Science Fiction and my next book hopefully will be a collection of stories in that genre, but I’ve been asked to continue the Hong Kong saga by a number of people so I think I may have to do that too.

I’ve loved Sci-fi and Fantasy since I was a young girl in Hong Kong during the Vietnam War, when the American sailors came for R&R and gave their books to the hawkers on the streets, where I could buy them for a few coins. It was the heyday of the greats: Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury etc. Sci-fi’s been in my blood since I was 11 yrs old.

These short stories of fantasy and sci-fi are suitable for everyone, and perhaps young adults in particular. They’re not violent nor very scientific, but more about how humans react and interact in unexpected and alien situations. 

The stories are varied and generally upbeat! Most of them demonstrate elements of resilience and truthfulness and, I like to think, kindness too. I’ve also aimed for most of these stories to be thought provoking, although not overtly so as they’re primarily written for entertainment. 

Overall, this is a short book with relatively easy to read print. I hope you enjoy it. 

You can also purchase it from Author House;

https://www.authorhouse.com/en-GB/bookstore/bookdetails/861947-sidirion

Published Works

This collection of stories about my life growing up in Hong Kong in the 1950s and 1960s was initially instigated by my niece, Claire, asking me questions about my childhood. Writing to her brought it home to me, sadly, that my era was now long gone, just like so many of the protagonists in these stories; my mother and father and all their friends, my grandparents and many others – and I myself will surely follow suit in the not too distant future! I realised that if my life during these years remained unrecorded it would be as if it had never existed, and an entire world in which I and so many had flourished and developed could disappear just like dust in the wind.

Short Stories

LAN TAU ISLAND, HONG KONG, 1960

ON THE BEACH

Keith is a retired Detective Sergeant and a native of Plymouth, Devon. He lives in Plympton with his wife Janice. On retirement he spent some years as a tour guide. It was at this time he became interested in the true story of the 1797 Plymouth Executions on the Hoe. After extensive research he wrote ’The Circle on the Hill’. Written as faction with the knowledge identified by records from original sources. He joined the Plymouth Writers Group in 2018 and has contributed many stories into that forum.

Circle On The Hill

Based on true events we find Robert Lee in his mid twenties leading a good life in the City of Dublin, Ireland. His family own a successful music business engaged in the making and sale of sought after musical instruments and becoming ever popular sheet music from their home and shop in Dame Street in the centre of Dublin life. Robert further gifted with an ability to play many musical instruments which in turn provides access to the music venues of the day as a performer and observer. It is summer 1796 and Rob visits a local hostelry where he comes upon the singing of a young girl. He engages with her, Sophie Fleury, and sees a rare talent who Rob would like to help on her musical journey. Her beauty and poise might also be a major factor. As he helps her and they spend time together he finds he is drawn to her far beyond her ability to sing. On the journey Rob engages with a part of the City he has never known. Sophie lives in the Dublin Liberties where misery, death and squalor exist on a daily basis.

The relationship is further tested when they discover he is Catholic and Sophie from the Protestant Huguenot faith. Robs family, two brothers and a sister live together. His sister Marie meets Sophie and invites her to her wedding. However on the day Sophie does not appear, Rob distraught tries to find her and understand what has happened. He finds that someone from his side of the Catholic faith has told her parents that Sophie must be banished to end the relationship between them. If not, retribution will be administered on her family.

A search and a plea to her parents ends in failure. Rob discovers who was responsible and the family dynamic is greatly challenged. To allow Sophie to return to her family he makes a life changing decision that will allow this to happen. He enlists with the British marines who are engaged on a recruitment drive in Dublin. In mid-November 1796 Rob boards a tender from Dublin to Stonehouse Barracks near Plymouth. Whilst constantly thinking of Sophie he engages the life of a marine and the opportunities it affords. He discovers the relationship between marines and seamen is fraught, the marines being the buffer between seamen and the ships officers who are autocratic and often violent. Rob is educated and listens to the seamen he encounters and can see the genuine grievance they have for better pay and conditions.

The Admiralty identify any activity by the seamen as mutiny. Far from the truth.
As Rob learns more, he discovers the seaman’s depositions to the Admirals of the fleet includes pay to be increased for both them and the marines. Conversations ensue between Rob and his fellow marines about support. This leads to a meeting on a hill just outside of the barracks on May 28th, 1797. Unbeknown to the few who were there, spies are among them. Should they support the seamen by laying down arms at morning parade the following day in support of the ‘shilling a day’. So few attended the hill it was clear to all the thought of such action was pointless. An evening parade is called and Robert Lee, John McGinnis and Daniel Coffey are taken to the guard house.

The following day Joseph Brennan for supporting the men whilst intoxicated in the evening parade. All are transferred to the cells at The Royal Citadel on Plymouth Hoe to await a general court martial and their fate. As the inducements to speak increase the evidence from fellow marines becomes more confused. Damning testimony but at variance to each other. The injustice provided by induced accusers comes to an end on 6th July 1797 on the clifftop of Plymouth Hoe. Witnessed by thousands of military and local people. A public display of inhumanity. What happened on this fateful day?

The ‘Circle On The Hill’ answers those questions and asks you to consider the underlying reasons behind the fate of four good men.

Found in Camden Passage, not far from Sadler’s Wells,

among the magic lanterns the owner buys and sells

a photo album, gathering dust,

just an idle curiosity,

moments of lives caught within a frame

snapshots of people who have no name.

What can we tell by such a fleeting glance

from their backgrounds, their clothes, their stance,

cashmere, tweeds, leather shoes and pearls?

Perhaps adventurers, daughters of earls,

wives and planters of rubber or tea,

administrators with files to oversee,

civil servants in the diplomatic corps

with home leave taken via Singapore.

The album travelling by sea and on trains

protected from mildew and the Rains,

carried overland through mud and the briar,

brought back when they were ready to retire

to Cheltenham, the Cotswolds, the Yorkshire Fells.

Then, how did their photos end up near Sadler’s Wells?

As children we knew little more

than he hadn’t had a good war.

He’d been captured in the Far East

where many of his comrades were slain,

left wounded in the knee,

and when the hostilities had ceased

he came back to Blacksmith’s Lane

to teach biology.

He must have been in constant pain,

total balance came uneasily,

nobody stared or made a fuss,

he brought the art of warfare to us.

Before he retired gangrene set in.

He died.

Mid-morning, misty November day,

a taxi ride from Leigh-on-Sea

to Rochford village,

the river and its estuary,

bird sanctuary and nesting grounds

the ebb and flow

on mud flats left by an outgoing tide.

In country lanes, hedges in white embroidery

where magpies forage, ivy embraces trees.

The world doesn’t stop, muted sounds

in the fog, aircraft taking off,

trains rumbling by.

The Vicar in flowing surplice waiting

in a draughty porch

while candles flicker under Norman vaults.

And the bride wears grey.

Heather left school at 16. She was a mature student at university. She has won first prizes in local and national competitions and in 2013 published her first collection of poetry. As well as short stories in newspapers, two of which have been broadcast by BBC Radio Devon, Heather has read on Radio St.Austell, Cornwall and at the Torbay Poetry Festival. She has also had five short plays performed and four iPODs presented, one of which was a stage reading in the DRUM, Theatre Royal. Heather has also appeared in the People’s Production of CITIZEN in the DRUM in 2019.

Short Stories

Grey

Mr. Crouch, Blacksmith’s Lane Primary School, 1950

The Photo Album

by John Parsons

I switched on the television for the evening news and my attention was grabbed by the newscaster. He mentioned a name was that was well-known to me. ‘Charles Taylor, one-time President of Liberia, stands accused at the International Court of Justice in the Hague of murder, rape and torture during the Sierra Leone civil war. He pleads ‘Not Guilty’.
Immediately, my mind was back in 2005, in Sierra Leone, West Africa, where I found myself shortly after the civil war for control of the diamond fields had ended. Here I met a woman who had witnessed the atrocities committed by the rebel army during the conflict.
Celestine was my cook. She was short in stature, a slender woman with tribal slashes on her cheeks. Her garb was a brightly striped pink and blue blouse and faded blue jeans protected by an apron speckled with tomato motifs. A white shower cap completed her outfit.
We often chatted under the polythene sheet that shielded her makeshift kitchen from the debilitating heat and tropical downpours.
Each morning, at elevenses, I watched Celestine bend over her charcoal burners, sprinkling aromatic herbs into her dixies. One morning when the equatorial sun was making me wilt, I sat down on a bench seat in her kitchen. Our relationship had developed over the preceding days and now was the opportune time to ask a question that nagged at my mind. ‘Celestine,’ I asked hesitantly, ‘How did you survive the civil war when tens of thousands died?’
She turned, gave a half-smile, replaced the lids on her dixies and joined me on the bench. ‘I will tell you.’ She lowered her voice, linked her arm in mine. ‘I survived by the grace of God.’
My curiosity was aroused, and she must have noticed for she continued in a neutral tone, ‘I was living in Freetown when rebels and local militia battled it out. The militia told me,’ ”Move, or be killed.’ She dabbed her brow with a handful of apron.
‘Where did you go?’
‘Me and my children slept in the bush.’ She spoke without emotion but gripped my arm tighter.
‘Terrible. Other people were hiding from the rebels. Some carried pails of water.’
‘Of course, it was hot and humid, wasn’t it?’
‘Oh!’ she gasped. ‘Not to drink. To drown their babies if they cried. If the rebels found them they would kill everyone.’
‘You are kidding.’
‘No. I saw them put babies under the water till the air bubbles had gone.’
I was dumb-founded. A fire-finch trilled outside of the kitchen. It’s melodic song didn’t stop Celestine from recounting her story.
‘One morning I told my children I must go and buy food. They cried, ‘ ”Mummy, don’t go.” ‘
Celestine’s voice crackled with urgency as she emphasised each word. Again in a neutral tone she said, ‘The rebels found the food queue. A boy-soldier walked up and down the line shouting, ‘ ”Hands behind backs.” ‘
She paused. What was she going to say next? When it came I was speechless.
Celestine released my arm, jumped to her feet and made the action of a machine gun. ‘Bang. Bang. Bang.’
I stared, mouth agape. ‘That’s terrible. What happened to your children? Did they starve?’
‘Thank God they survived.’ She flashed her ebony-coloured eyes.
In the distance I heard a faint sound and cocked my ear. Someone was coming along the path beside the kitchen. Celestine heard too. She got to her feet, walked back to her dixies and checked their contents.
When the footsteps died away she returned and gripped my arm again and pressed on with her story. ‘Then the rebels picked someone out.’ ”You stand over there,” ‘they screeched. They took a few more steps,’ ”and you…you…stand over there.” ‘
‘You know,’ she went on, ‘they put a tyre round someone’s neck, poured on petrol and lit it.’ She squeezed my arm. ‘I saw them burn…burn to death.’
My heart pounded.
A few hours earlier, first light creeping over the mangrove swamps of the Sierra Leone River, in tints of yellow and orange, the world had seemed a beautiful place. A pied kingfisher had enviously watched a man fishing from a dugout canoe.
Celestine was now gazing at an indefinable point in the polythene ceiling. Could she again smell the sweet, sickly stench of burning flesh?
She interrupted my disturbed thoughts. ‘A young woman in the food queue was pregnant.’ Her voice was sinking as she placed both hands on her stomach. ‘A boy-soldier…came along and smacked her belly, taunting her.’
‘Celestine, how old was he?’
‘About the same age as my youngest son. Ten. His eyes were glassy. Drugs. They cut their foreheads with a razor and pressed cocaine straight in.’
On the previous afternoon when I went to buy fresh papaya a bunch of kids had crowded my minibus, cane baskets on their heads. How could these charming, mischievous African children – or children like them – kill without mercy? They seemed to be more at home trading fruit and general merchandise than slaughtering people old enough to be their parents.
Celestine pressed on with her story. ‘The boy-soldier strutted up and down, peering into the pregnant woman’s eyes. ‘ ”What kind of baby is it, a boy or girl?” ‘he yelled. She was afraid to speak but the boy-soldier persisted.
‘Looking to the ground she breathed.’ ”It’s a girl.” ‘
A lump rose in my throat.
‘ ”We will see,” ‘said the boy-soldier.’
Celestine looked directly at me. ‘Do you know…he slit open the woman’s stomach with his machete. I watched him tear out the unborn baby.’
I felt sick. In my mind I heard the woman’s blood-curdling screams as she fell to the ground and her innards were snatched at by dogs maddened by hunger.
She closed her eyes.
‘Sorry,’ I whispered, my eyes watering. ‘Can anyone forgive such an outrage?’
For a moment she was silent. ‘At first I felt hate. But then, as time went on, by the grace of God I was able to forgive.’
How could Celestine talk of ‘forgiveness’, how could she? Some hold a grudge if a hurtful word comes their way, yet this woman who had seen unbelievable horror still showed a benevolent attitude to the perpetrators of the atrocities.
I was shocked. ‘Celestine, I’ve never met anyone as spiritual as you.’
‘Me no finish.’
My stomach was doing somersaults. I couldn’t take any more horrors, but I had no choice for Celestine was saying, ‘The soldiers took the foetus and pounded it to pulp with their rifle butts. Do you know…?’
I shook my head.
‘They ate it.’ She softly reiterated the words while I fought to keep my emotions in check.
‘Celestine,’ I repeated my earlier question in a faltering voice. ‘How did you survive when thousands died? Tell the truth?’
She sighed and said softly just as she had before, ‘Only by the grace of God.’
In my hotel on moonless nights, trying to live a normal life by candlelight, I thought of her words. They haunted me then and have done ever since.
If only Celestine could have seen into the future she would have cried for joy. Life would return to normality. Years of peace would follow the war. Employment opportunities would increase but more importantly, Charles Taylor, the architect of the war would be brought to justice.

by John Parsons

This was to be a red-letter day in my life. I had waited nine months to land on Komodo Island, and now it was just a few miles away, across a bay. From the deck of our ship I could see the outline of a hill range, a green fringe of coconut palms, and silky blue-green tropical water teeming with fish.
We were a mixed bag of international travellers who had boarded the ship in Bali, numerous couples, gap-year backpackers and a hotchpotch of singletons such as myself. The sole reason for our being here was to see the dragons. The Komodo dragon is now an endangered species. Only 6,000 inhabit four small islands of the Indonesian archipelago.
Below, accessed from the stern, a Zodiac – an inflatable rubber dingy powered by an outboard – would shoot across the waves to the island. That would be an adventure in itself. One was being lowered onto the water and was now filling with passengers. I watched a shoal of flying fish disappear in the dazzling turquoise waters of the bay then descended a flight of stairs. An officer handed over a life-jacket. I boarded, taking a vacant seat beside an elderly Australian who was fingering his camera settings. I nodded a greeting.
The other four passengers were talking incessantly, ‘Have you got the sun cream? Did you remember the water bottle? What do we do if a dragon comes along?’ I detected a certain nervousness. No one knew how they would feel, or react, when facing an antediluvian monster.
On the previous evening a pep talk was given in the ship’s lounge, and a film was shown. ‘Despite their bad eye-sight,’ an officer said, ‘the Komodo dragon associates red with blood and is attracted to it. Women who are menstruating, or anyone with a wound, are advised to stay on board.’ In the film the dragons were chasing villagers. That was now tempering my enthusiasm: there are no medical facilities on Komodo Island if someone is bitten.
A cloud of acrid petrol fumes filled the air. The Zodiac sped away, bouncing across the choppy waters. In no time it slithered onto a sandy beach.
In the shade of coconut palms, away from the furnace-like rays of the sun, stood a man, short in stature with a weather-beaten face. Our ranger wore a pair of tattered khaki shorts and a threadbare white shirt – probably his complete wardrobe. We gathered around.
‘My name Dik. Welcome. Today we see dragon. No problem.’ He held a wooden staff, notched at the end, possibly to parry wild beasts, although a rifle would have been more appropriate. Our ranger looked from face to face. ‘If dragon is on path, stand aside. No problem. Please stay with group. No wander off. Okay. First we go to office to register.’
I felt a mix of excitement and terror.
These fearsome crocodile-like dragons have thick forked-tongues and venom glands in their lower jaw, scaly skin, serrated teeth, armour plated heads and long sharp claws. They are capable of outrunning a dog over short distances. After biting its prey – wild pig, deer, water buffalo – the creature tracks it until the toxin’s work is done, usually four days.
We filed along a dusty track flanked by roughly constructed stilted huts. I stood aside to take a photograph when I spotted a dragon – the heaviest monitor lizard in the world – coming towards me. Initially I froze, then backed away to the amusement of a gaggle of giggling half-naked kiddies. The creature was moving with a swaying motion, its tongue flicking in and out, eyes void of emotion, dripping saliva.
Seconds later my fear dissipated. The 3m (10ft) long dragon had ignored me. I ran after my colleagues, climbed wooden steps to a hut and signed the register.
‘Okay people. Follow me.’ We set off in single file. I stayed close to Dik, hoping to see any snakes that he disturbed. The trail led through a wall of greenery into another world, a jungle of giant bamboo, lofty trees with lianas hanging down, low boughs colonised by spindly leaved epiphytes. These plants attach themselves to a branch, taking their nutrients from rain water, and the air. The piercing alarm calls of unseen birds echoed from the canopy, and the sounds of power tools were probably insect noises.
The ground was covered with foetid, decomposing vegetation, and damp leaf mould furrowed by an animal rooting for food. Dik saw me staring. ‘Wild pig,’ he said. The heat and humidity were like a heavy blanket spread across the landscape. Sweat dripped from my brow. Despite the oppressive heat an Oriental woman from the ship wore a skin-tight black polo-neck sweater.
In time the jungle walls parted to reveal a small area of savannah where a dragon was lying on the grass asleep. Here was the reason why I had spent a fortune and travelled halfway around the world. I could smell the dry grass, the dust rising from our footfalls and a strange odour from the reptile. Perhaps it was mating time!
Dik held up a hand, tapped his staff on the ground, his ebony eyes glistening in the diffused daylight. ‘I explain about dragon.’ He looked from face to face then continued in monotones. ‘Dragon is cold blooded. Must warm in morning.’ Several of the group went much closer than seemed safe, almost touching the beast. Did they realise that dragons had killed villagers and that their toxic bite lowers blood pressure and causes severe shock? I stood well clear of its tail which could have swung around and taken off a leg.
Dik again tapped his staff on the ground. ‘Okay people. Forward.’ We slipped past a second dragon, a juvenile, lying absolutely still. From a distance it could have been mistaken for a log. A few minutes later Dik signalled with his hand. We stopped. ‘The dragon does not attack on purpose. If it comes we stand still. Let it pass. Okay.’
Then we were off again, but not before I spotted a jungle fowl in the undergrowth, and someone shouted, ‘Sulphur-crested cockatoo.’ We were south of the Wallace Line, an imaginary boundary where in 1859 the British Naturalist Alfred Wallace noted that the Asiatic fauna gave way to the Australasian.
We stopped a third time at Dik’s command. A wooden sign partially obscured by leaves was staked into the ground. Words were burnt into the wood saying: Dangerous area. Watch out. Komodo crossing.
‘Once I have group of people,’ Dik said, flicking an ant off his arm. ‘I say go along this track and please no leave group…one man…German man… say he go to all countries of the world. He left group. We no see him again.’
A murmur rose from my colleagues.
‘Okay. Follow. Nearly there,’ Dik said high spiritedly. ‘We reach stockade, viewing site.’ Then something happened that could not have been foreseen. A rustling sound caused Dik to freeze. He turned, mouthing the words, ‘Cobra…spitting cobra.’ My blood pressure rocketed at the sight of a deadly snake just a metre away. In seconds it slithered into the undergrowth and I gave a sigh of relief. I wished to observe snakes but this was too close.
Sunshine burst through the tunnel of matted foliage, highlighting a withered bough where a delicate pink orchid had taken root. There are 20,000 species of orchid in the world and most are epiphytes.
Just ahead was a wooden fence, the stockade, from where the dragons could be studied and photographed from a safe distance. Tangled lianas gave way to sun-dried grass shaded by mature broad-leaf trees.
I was telling a colleague that the dragons have both male and female sex chromosomes when Dik’s voice broke into our small-talk. ‘You stand behind stockade.’ Dik pointed with his staff. ‘See holes in ground where dragon shelter from sun…or crawl around. Life span 30 years.’
Now in a safe position, Dik recounted an incident that emphasised one of the dangers of visiting Komodo. ‘You hear of Switzerland lady? She was bitten.’ Dik’s tone was uneasy. ‘It no kill her. Problem. No hospital. She bleed. She die.’
My colleagues attention was taken by brightly coloured butterflies flitting past, as large as medium sized birds.
It was a scene from pre-history. Across the sun-scorched biscuit coloured grass, some twenty-five paces, were maybe thirty dragons, either moving ponderously along the ground, their forked tongues testing the air, or sleeping. ‘They move slowly, unless attacking,’ Dik commented.
I recalled watching a TV programme where villagers slit the throat of a goat, and hung it from the branch of a tree. The smell of blood enticed the dragon to rush to the tree and tear off the flesh. This barbaric practice now belongs to the past.
Money couldn’t buy this experience. I would go back to England with memories that would never fade. My perception of life had changed, my horizons had been widened, and I had an incredible story to recount to my friends.