by Jean Moran
Once she was seated the driver responded to the old woman’s barked instructions. Her voice softened only when she was speaking to her grandson.
The bandy-legged driver, his feet encased in leather sandals that had seen better days, turned the rickshaw so it was facing the way Zu Mu pointed and plodded off.
The alley narrowed. At the very end Chinese characters fluttered on silk banners. In alternate strands, paper lanterns threaded on rope bounced and spun above the braziers of those selling sweetmeats and toasted crickets. The further they went, the more pungent the aroma, the smell contained by the constricting walls of the alley.
‘Are we going shopping?’
Her question was aired lightly. She liked the feel of this place, the upper windows of the houses only feet away from those on the opposite side. If she really wanted to, this was her chance to run, so why didn’t she?
Smiling, she looked at Zu Mu so the old woman would know she was aware she would not be answered.
To her surprise Zu Mu faced her, her eyes as deadly cold as those of a cobra. There was pure malice in that look, plus a hint of triumph, as though whatever was about to happen had sent her spirit soaring.
Trepidation barely held in check, Rowena prepared herself for the unexpected.
They left the steaming hubbub of the narrow alleys and broke out into the open, passing less official buildings, more humble dwellings, then a road she recognised. Her blood ran cold.
‘Where are we going?’ She thought she knew, but still had to ask, not that she was likely to receive an answer, just a wider smile. That in itself was worrying. Kim’s grandmother never smiled at her, only scowled.
They rattled along, the old lady remaining silent with that satisfied look on her face.
Rowena considered jumping out of the rickshaw and running into the paddy fields, until she spied the contingent of Japanese soldiers marching behind them and a staff car packed with officers some way in front. ‘I know this road,’ she whispered.
She looked around her to confirm that she was right. This road, she remembered, went to Fort Stanley and passed St Stephen’s, the school that had been turned into a hospital that had become a charnel house, the place where many people had died.
Nausea gripped her belly and rose into her throat. She looked accusingly at the old lady. ‘You’re having me killed, aren’t you?’
There was a smug look on her face. Kim’s grandmother was taking great pleasure in her discomfort. Only it was more than discomfort. With all that had happened at St Stephen’s she was falling to pieces.
She poked the rickshaw driver in the back and asked him where they were going.
He shook his head.
Not that he doesn’t know, thought Rowena. He is not allowed to tell.
They came to a fork in the road.
The old woman laughed.
Rowena’s heart was in her mouth, her arms spread to either side of her, her fists tight on the folded-down hood of the rickshaw. The right fork was the road she had sometimes walked in those few short days before the hospital had become a slaughterhouse.
The buildings in which she’d experienced the worst ordeal of her life came into view. They looked unchanged, except that the flag depicting the rising sun had replaced the Union flag. ‘I can’t bear this.’ Her throat felt as though it was closing. If she didn’t do something soon, she might die through lack of oxygen.
She’d jump and run, damn the consequences. It was her only hope.
Claw-like fingers grabbed her hand, holding it so tightly her fingers began to tingle.
She struggled but Zu Mu clung on.
Closer and closer. The entrance to St Stephen’s was just yards away. One quarter of the buildings showed beyond the red flame trees. A little further, and more came into view.
To her relief, the rickshaw driver did not slow or turn in, but ran on, past the entrance, past the familiar wall, the trees, the fields to one side.
In the near distance there was another building, an official-looking place that Rowena recognised as Fort Stanley. Another entrance, another guard post, more enemy soldiers with guns.
And then it came to her what this was about. Ahead was a prison camp. Zu Mu wanted everything as it was before, her grandson to herself and Rowena locked away from him.
Seeing the rickshaw approach, a Japanese guard held up his hand, ordering it to stop.
Rebellion stirred in her veins. ‘Let me go, you old witch. Let me go!’
She struggled against the old woman, kicking at her legs, trying without success to step on the most vulnerable part of Zu Mu’s body, her feet.
The little feet kicked at her shins, too high for Rowena to stamp on them.
‘You wicked old—’
Zu Mu clung on, shouting at the guard, as though Chinese would somehow translate into Japanese. When he shouted back, the old woman tried a different tack.
‘This woman British. Should be here in camp. I bring her here.’
Rowena was astonished. Never once had Zu Mu said anything in English. Now the shrewd old bird had shown her cards, desperate to get rid of her.
Rowena lashed out as the guard dragged her down from the rickshaw. He retaliated with a slap to her face, shaking her so hard that she fell to the ground. He waved away the rickshaw driver, who didn’t wait to be told twice, grit spurting out from the wheels as he did a tight turn and ran off as fast as his legs would take him.
In the back, her tiny feet a good four inches off the floor, the old lady threw back her head and laughed.
Sick with fear, Rowena eyed the white building with its metal-framed windows. This time no amount of bribes would obtain her release because Kim would not know she was here. His grandmother had left the car and driver and taken the rickshaw for good reason. She would not tell Kim the truth but would say that Rowena had run away.
One guard gripping her right arm, another her left, she was half dragged, half carried through a gate between high fences enclosing Fort Stanley, which had once administered the British Crown Colony. Now there were guard towers at intermittent intervals, machine-guns levelled at the inmates. As she drew closer, featureless figures beyond the wire became women and children, staring at her with wide-eyed interest, the wind blowing their dry hair across faces as pale as candle wax.
The buildings, people, shouted orders, paperwork and questions all passed in a blur but her fear had subsided. Fort Stanley was not St Stephen’s although, some distance behind her, she could see the top of the hospital thrusting above the treetops.
Within an hour fear was replaced by joy as friendly faces smiled and voices called to her. One face, one voice stood out. ‘Rowena!’
‘Alice!’
They hugged, then held each other at arm’s length.
Alice was wearing a pair of white shorts and a dark green top. Rowena remembered that the top used to be quite snug on her. Now it was hanging loose.
Alice noticed her surprise. ‘Don’t tell me I’ve lost weight. I already know that. How about you?’
Rowena shrugged. ‘Oh, I’m not too bad.’ She threw back her head and closed her eyes. ‘I’m so relieved. I thought they were taking me to St Stephen’s.’
‘Welcome to Chez Stanley, your new home – such as it is. You look good – in fact, I’d say you’ve put weight on. Anyway, our chief medical officer will give you the once-over. It’s purely so he’s forewarned of any diseases coming into the camp.’
Rowena followed her to the ground-floor medical facility where an examination area was screened off in the far corner.
‘I’ll take you for tea afterwards.’
Alice nodded at the doctor. ‘Do you need me to assist?’
‘May as well.’
The doctor asked her the usual questions, had she been sick, had she noticed any change in her breathing, any sores, anything out of the ordinary.
She responded that she was feeling fine and hadn’t suffered anything except fatigue.
The doctor peer
ed at her over his glasses. ‘And your menstruation is regular?’
‘I think...’ She stopped. Her life during the last few months had been extraordinary to say the least, so unusual that she’d hardly noticed the more routine things in her life. ‘Just the odd spot. That’s all.’
‘Not unusual in the present circumstances. But I’ll examine you.’
‘I can hardly examine myself!’
When he had finished, she knew from his face that those few spots were far from a normal monthly flow. ‘I would estimate that you’re about four months pregnant.’
Rowena bit down on the things she could say, but the sickening truth spilled into a sigh of despair.
Alice lowered her voice. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Fancy,’ said Rowena, numbly, as they left the screened-off area, wound their way between the beds and went out into the sunshine. ‘I’m a doctor but I never gave it any thought. My mind’s been full of so many other things.’
‘Whose is it? Not the Irishman’s, I take it.’
‘No. The enemy soldiers didn’t care about my monthly bleed. The baby will have a foreign look about it – if it ever gets born.’
Alice waved her hand behind her. ‘Well, you couldn’t have come to a better place. There’s more doctors and nurses per square foot than there are stars in the sky.’
‘My God.’
‘It wasn’t him, the fellow who took you from the camp?’
‘No.’
‘Did you...?’
‘No. I didn’t.’
‘Damn rotten luck, though. How the hell are you going to cope with a kid that looks, well, not like us?’
‘Don’t say that, Alice. It’ll be just a child.’
‘And a lovely one. But you know what I mean. Not everyone is going to love it.’
‘Only those who don’t know it.’
‘But the Japs are going to be hated after the war – in fact, anyone who looks a bit Oriental will have a tough time. You could always put it in an orphanage.’
‘Alice, will you please let it drop? I’ll think further on it when the time comes.’
‘Of course you will. In the meantime I think I’m going to faint with joy, you turning up here out of the blue.’
‘Where’s Tansy?’
‘She’s got malaria. We treat it with whatever we can, but it keeps recurring.’
Someone susceptible would never entirely shake it off, Rowena knew. They would have to learn to live with it.
‘Jaundice is our other main problem, along with malnutrition. There’s never enough to eat – though you’ve already noticed that.’ Alice plucked playfully at her baggy blouse and the legs of her shorts, which no longer dug into her thighs as they once had.
‘And all this in just a few months?’
‘Precisely. What the hell’s it gonna be like after a few years? If it comes to it,’ she added, trying to make it sound like a joke, though they both knew it was a worst-case scenario.
A group of children ran noisily in front of them, riding hobby-horses made from bits of wood, old socks and string. A boy ran at the guards brandishing a wooden sword. They pointed their bayonets at him just as playfully and laughed.
Rowena watched them running away, heard laughter exchanged between the guards.
Humour and joy still existed, even here. For a while it had seemed that nobody would ever laugh again.
Alice laid a hand on Rowena’s shoulder. ‘Come on. I’ll find us that tea I promised you and introduce you to a few people.’
Initially set up as a range of offices, the building was now subdivided into dormitories for the women and children living there. Alice explained that half of the bottom floor catered for families and the other half was used as a hospital.
‘Some of the men got allocated here, but only those with families. I can’t know for sure, but I think they’re the lucky ones. At least they have their families.’
The room on the first floor was long and subdivided into sleeping quarters by large pieces of tarpaulin, coverings for army trucks in a former life. Some women were sleeping, sewing, reading or knitting. One woman looked up from breastfeeding her baby and smiled.
‘Alice. And a new arrival?’ The booming voice came from a square-shouldered woman sitting behind a trestle table with two others at the far end of the room. Smiling in welcome, she got to her feet and came round from behind the table. She was wearing a gold lamé cocktail dress with a pair of scruffy black plimsolls. ‘Excuse the mix of styles. Grabbed what I could when I realised the end was nigh – the end of Hong Kong, that is.’
Alice introduced her as Marjorie Greenbank. ‘Marjorie’s husband used to work here.’
‘How do you do?’ She gave Rowena’s hand a firm shake. ‘You look as though you’ve been well cared for. That should give you a head start. In time you’ll be as scrawny as the rest of us. But we still have tea. Nothing is too bad as long as we have our tea, don’t you think so, my dear?’
‘Dr Rossiter is pregnant.’
‘Oh dear. Never mind. Even more of an excuse for some tea.’
‘I’d love a cup.’
‘You shall have it. My husband liked his tea, my dear. He also told me the location of the tea and the store cupboard and gave me his key before he was taken.’
‘He’s not here with you?’
‘No. They shot him because he didn’t get to Murray Square on time. He missed the less than pleasurable experience of being housed in one of the brothels down near the harbour. Quite a few of us were held there while they tried to work out what to do. Hundreds of us stuffed into the most dreadful accommodation possible. The women there didn’t like it either. Interfered with their business, you see. Does Darjeeling suit you? Or I do have a little Earl Grey left. The Assam is favoured by our Indian comrades so I tend to keep it exclusively for them.’
Rowena was amazed that she could talk so casually about varieties of tea in the midst of a prisoner-of-war camp.
‘I refuse to lower standards,’ Marjorie added, on seeing Rowena’s surprise, ‘but I’m afraid I can spare you only half a lump of sugar and just a spot of milk. We’re running low.’
‘I’m fine with black and no sugar.’
Alice went off to fetch a tin of condensed milk.
Marjorie talked above the clattering of crockery and the whistling of the boiling kettle. Topics of conversation came and went, but she chatted mostly about the various embassies in which her husband had served, India where she had met him, and how many applications there had been to join the amateur dramatic society she’d lately set up. ‘You look Anglo-Indian. Am I right?’
Rowena was taken aback, inclined to deny her pedigree, but Marjorie didn’t give her the chance. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t tell a soul.’
Not once did she ask Rowena where she’d got the silk pyjamas she was wearing, or where she’d been before arriving at the camp, and for that she was thankful.
Tea clutched in their hands, Alice took her outside to a shady spot at the back of the building where rows of ragged washing cracked like gunshots in the wind. A cast-iron bench was set against the back wall. A few of its wooden slats were missing, but there were enough left to support their combined weight.
All around her women were carrying on with their lives, doing the mundane things that would occupy them no matter where they were in the world. It felt strange but also reassuring.
‘It’s good to be here,’ she whispered, smiling as two children threw a rag ball to each other while their mother tied their pitiful clothes to a washing line strung between two saplings.
Alice patted her hand. ‘You’re with friends, your own countrywomen for the most part.’
It wasn’t until she’d sipped her tea that Rowena realised how dry her mouth had been. She had panicked at the prospect of returning to St Stephen’s to endure the same ordeal as before.
‘I haven’t seen you since everyone had to report to Murray Square. You were there one minute and gone the next. Are you
going to tell me more of what happened?’
‘You saw him collect me.’
Alice nodded. ‘Recognised him right away.’
‘Kim Pheloung, the foreigner, as you insisted on calling him.’
Alice fidgeted, sipped tea and looked unconcerned, but Rowena wasn’t fooled. She answered the question before it came. ‘I’ve already told you, he never touched me.’
Alice looked puzzled. ‘So why...’
‘ … did he pay a bribe to free me?’ She shook her head. ‘Alice, I still ask myself the same question and don’t know the answer. I asked him but his answer didn’t make any sense. He told me that the colonel handed me into his custody. I can’t believe he got away with it except that the Japanese need people like Kim to keep everyone in line. I suspect he’s more powerful on his own patch than they are.’
‘Looking at what you’re wearing and the bloom on your face, I take it you were treated well, which begs the question, why come here? Was it your decision?’
‘No.’ She told Alice something of her short stay in the old house within the walled city, of the cool, dark interior, the guards, the servants and especially his grandmother. ‘It was she who dumped me here. I wondered why we took a rickshaw. I presume it was because she didn’t want the driver of the car to bear witness to her bringing me here. She was jealous that I was usurping her position with her grandson.’
‘I wonder if he’ll come here and take you back.’
Rowena shrugged. ‘Not if he doesn’t know I’m here. She’s a sly one, his grandmother. She’ll probably tell him I ran away.’
‘If he did come, would you go with him?’
‘No. I’ve got my condition to think of.’
Thankfully Alice didn’t ask whether she would go with him if she wasn’t pregnant, because she wouldn’t have been able to answer.
‘Oh, well,’ said Alice, draining the delicate cup Marjorie had lent her, ‘you’re safe and will be well looked after – especially when the time comes.’ She jerked her chin at Rowena’s stomach, which at present was only showing the very slightest swelling.
Rowena looked down into the remains of her cup, noting the decoration of painted roses and gilt around its rim. It was so English, bound to arouse homesickness in a place like this. In her it evoked a different response. ‘I don’t want it.’