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| Coming Home |
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The remains of the European victims are returning from Bali. The pain and memories are already here
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By ERIC POOLEY and LUCY FISHER |
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Posted Sunday, October 20, 2002; 4.15pm. BST
Chris Redman chased Claire Hatton halfway around the world to win her heart. They met at Cardiff University but he caught up with her in Indonesia, and like many young Europeans, they made a good life for themselves in the global village of the Far East, moving to Singapore last year. Claire was the ambitious one, so Chris gave up two careers to let her pursue one in airline management; he worked for an express-shipping company but preferred to be with her or playing rugby — throwing himself into three games a week, getting some laughs and making some headlines during a match last year in Hong Kong when he streaked naked across the pitch. He had learned what a smile is worth. Four years ago he waited alone in Britain while Claire was caught in fierce rioting in Jakarta; around 1,000 were killed and over 4,000 buildings torched, but she had a job to do as a manager for British Airways, and she did it — helping some 2,500 people get out alive. Tony Blair honored her as a "person of the year."
Now Claire is the one left alone, and her memories honor Chris. He was in Bali with his rugby team; one of the Kuta Beach bombs killed him. No one else can know how Claire will come to grips with a fact such as this, but we can report that she's working on it. "Chris lived life like an adventure," she told TIME. "He was a real legend. He was my best friend and soul mate." She carried his rugby shirt in her arms on her flight from Bali back to Britain.
The victims will be coming home this week, at least those that weren't turned to ash by the blast and the fire, and all of them are being remembered now in the trance-like private moments of loved ones and in memorial services and eulogies that can only hint at their youth and vigor and love of life. For the second time in just over a year, terrorists in a far-away place have struck a blow that shook Europe as surely as its physical target. Australia suffered the worst losses, with some 120 dead or missing. More than 30 Britons are feared dead, along with 20 South Africans and 10 Swedes and smaller but no less painful numbers from countries across the world.
Among the missing is Lucy Empson, 30, who worked as a marketing manager in London for Time-Life International, part of the company that owns Time. She had gone to Bali on holiday with her friend Emma Fox, 32, whose body has been recovered. Lucy loved to dance and travel; her parents, Sandra and Bob Empson, recall her as "sprinkled with happiness." Remembering Lucy's spirit helps the Empsons cope, but Emma's mother, Andrea Sherman, is getting through the day by sharpening her rage to a clean point. The "evil bastards" who murdered her daughter, she told the Daily Telegraph, "should have their lives extinguished."
The bombs at Paddy's Bar and the Sari Club separated friends and couples and cut down at random people who had come to the East to see the world or surf or attend a conference or just for a holiday. Jesper Magnusson, 30, and Maria Johansson, 29, were on their way back to Sweden after a year's traveling; they planned to get married, have children and move to London. Jesper was shielded by the Sari Club's toilet wall, and someone helped him climb over it and out. Maria was not so lucky.
Mechanic Marc Gajardo, 30, from Cornwall, and his girlfriend, Hanabeth Luke, 22, were dancing when Marc decided to get some air. He walked straight into the blast. Hanabeth found herself in the burning dark, but jumped out of a window. Marc had been planning a new life in Australia with Hanabeth. "He'd got stuck in a rut over here in England — he wasn't one for the rat race," says his brother Steven.
It may be obscene to talk about good coming from an atrocity like this, but there was good to be found in the response of young people who came to the island to rave and ended up helping each other get to safety or hospital, to find friends or a few moments of consolation. Deborah Haines, a teacher from East London in her thirties, was on holiday from her work as a Save the Children volunteer in Indonesia; she appointed herself to maintain the roll of the missing at Sanglah hospital in Denpasar, updating the endless list of names: found. evacuated. passed away. Others held candlelight vigils at ground zero and on the beach. And two Sari Club survivors got married: Sarah-Jane Brightmore and Philip Currie, both 27 and working as models in Hong Kong, last Thursday went ahead with their wedding at a temple in a hotel garden, their hope as visible as their bruises.
It was a gesture that would have appealed to Jon Ellwood, 39, director of studies at the International School in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. A Briton by birth and a humanist by temperament, he was on Bali for a conference. "He was a dedicated teacher, from a family [who thought] in terms of an international world," says his mother, Caroline Ellwood. One of his subjects, the theory of knowledge, is "all about truth," she says. "How difficult it is to find it and how dangerous it is to think that you alone have it." His death has now been confirmed. So has his philosophy.
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