Miss Jill

by Emily Hahn

  “I’ll be all right,” said Jill. “Keep your hair on.”

  She remained calm in spite of her amah’s wild terror and the cook boy’s loss of efficiency. She drove the one to work and the other out to market, to buy what he could of food, but after that the silence indoors and the crash of shells outside began to get on her nerves. After all, this time the Japs had attacked Europeans.… She went out for a walk. There was a strange contrast in the streets: military trucks and ambulances went careening purposefully around corners, their uniformed drivers looking worried and alert, whereas civilians like herself simply loitered about or walked spasmodically from house to house, exchanging guesses with friends and strangers. Jill went unwillingly back to her flat, wishing she did not live alone. It was creepy, not having anybody to talk to. She turned on her radio and tried to make sense out of the reports that came through. After lunch she became desperate and tried to go downtown. The trams were crowded with Chinese, she could not seem to find any busses, and at last she walked. As she approached the shopping center the wail of the air-raid siren sent everyone running for cover; following the crowd, she went down into one of the few shelters that had been constructed near the water front. It was her first time in a dugout, and she was nearly overcome with terror, an unreasoning feeling that seized her by the throat as soon as the crowd grew thick. She was afraid of being suffocated, of being crushed by the people, of being blown up in that enclosed space, a conception which seemed much more horrible somehow than that of being blown into pieces out in the fresh air.

  Then she looked at the Chinese woman who was standing next to her. The woman was young and pretty, plainly dressed in a long gown of shining black Canton silk. As she caught Jill’s eye she smiled. It was a merry smile, yet calm. She might as well have said, “What silly asses we look, don’t we!” Automatically Jill smiled in return. The panic subsided and she felt better, even before the siren sounded “All Clear.” With a hum of satisfaction most of the people who had run into the dugout filed out and went on about their various businesses. Jill and the girl in black walked down the street together.

  “Not very convenient,” said the Chinese. “Is it?”

  “It isn’t,” agreed Jill. “I can’t make up my mind what to do. Waiting about makes one nervous.”

  The girl looked at her humorously. “But there is nothing one can do,” she said. “No boats to go away in or anything. They say the last English gunboat escaped early today; perhaps the Japanese caught it outside the harbor. Didn’t the English know they were coming?”

  “It doesn’t look like it,” said Jill. “They’re always behindhand, of course.…”

  The siren began to wail again; they looked up at the sky as a plane’s drone filled the air, a background to the siren. They were nowhere near a shelter. The Chinese woman said composedly, “I don’t see where we can go, do you?”

  “No, but surely, as long as we can’t see the plane just above, it can’t drop a bomb on us.”

  “It sounds as if it were on the other side of the Peak,” said the Chinese.

  They kept on their way, like other pedestrians near by.

  “Are you going to be a nurse in the hospitals?” asked Jill’s companion.

  Jill was ashamed that she had to answer, “No.” She added, “I’ve never trained for it. I’d just be in the way, I expect. You don’t seem awfully worried about all this. Aren’t you afraid?”

  The girl shrugged and made a grimace. “Whatever it is will happen no matter where I am. Besides, none of my own family is here; they are safe in Shanghai.”

  “Oh, isn’t there any war going on in Shanghai?” asked Jill in surprise. “I thought they were attacking everywhere at once.”

  “No, the Japanese just took control quietly there, and I suppose it will be like that until the end of the war. My parents are there, and my brothers and sisters.”

  “You are lucky,” said Jill. “No one to worry about.”

  “Yes, I am fortunate. I am alone here with my husband; no one I care for is in danger.” She said it simply, as if it were an everyday affair to confess to a perfect stranger that she didn’t like her husband. “And you, are you afraid?” she asked politely.

  “I’m alone,” said Jill. “There’s no one for me to fret over. I’m lucky too.”

  She wondered if that were the truth or a lie. They had come to the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank Building, where the road was split in two by a wedge of masonry. Along by the harbor all the house fronts were piled up with sandbags, and there were men in uniform stationed here and there near the water. Jill and her friend walked down to the first shops together. At Lane Crawford’s they parted; the Chinese girl went to queue up in the line waiting at the door of the provision shop, but Jill had no desire to stand still. They drifted apart as they had joined together, with a friendly smile.

  She went into the Gloucester lounge and ordered a drink. There were only a few people with leisure like herself; when another air-raid warning came over and the hotel boys ran to lock the great doors, they looked on gloomily and consulted their watches, as if they had important work to do after all. But with the unlocking of the doors their restlessness faded. Jill wandered out into the arcades; Chinese were sitting on camp chairs in the dubious shelter of the glass roofs, looking incuriously at her as she came by. The pavement was beginning to appear neglected, littered with torn paper and orange skins. Most of the shopwindows were crisscrossed with shatterproof paper, and everywhere she saw people busily fitting up their places with blackout curtains. She remembered that she had not given orders to her own servant about the blackout and turned her steps homeward.

  It was not until after dark that Jill remembered Mei-li and the opium tray. By all the traditions she should have felt ill and restless now without the drug, but she must have been gripped by some stronger force, for her mind did not dwell at all on her old habit. She waited impatiently for Andy’s phone call; she was not perturbed for his safety, but she did not want to go to bed without getting it over with, otherwise he would disturb her rest. He called at last; his voice was strained but cheerful over the phone.

  “I would have come down to see you,” he said, “but my sister is terribly frightened, and we have a lot of people moving in on us, besides.”

  “Why are they moving in?”

  “Oh, they’ve got some idea it’s safer up here, I suppose. Look now, Jillie, nobody’s tried to shift you, have they?”

  “No, of course not. Who would try?”

  “They’re moving everyone out on this face of the Peak,” said Andy. “Shells are coming over pretty fast. But your part of town ought to be all right. You sit tight, Jillie. Good night, dear. I’ll phone as soon as I get a chance in the morning.”

  It seemed much quieter after dark. Jill lay awake for a while, but there didn’t seem to be anything to think about, and at last she slipped into sleep. It was not much of a change. She had been dazed all day, like a somnambulist. The shell bursts were regular and not too loud; they did not wake her. So ended the first day of the Hong Kong hostilities.

  Up among the Europeans on the hillside things were probably less mystifying. Jill, depending on a newspaper which did not always arrive, on her radio and Andy’s fragmentary phone calls, lived in a state of ignorance which was no harder on the nerves than inside knowledge of the debacle would have been. Any alarming rumor that came to her ears from the servants she ignored as Chinese gossip. Once she telephoned Rosemary, but they were cut off before she had time to learn very much. On the seventh day she saw some English soldiers shambling by the building, looking tired out, and she ran to the door and called to them.

  “How’s it going?” she asked.

  Two of them stopped and looked at her with heavy eyes. They were unshaved and dirty. It was a bright sunny day, typical of December in Hong Kong, and it seemed strange that Englishmen against that postcard background should look so seedy.

  “We don’t know,” said one of them. “Until this mor
ning we didn’t even know where we were, let alone them.”

  “Would you like something to eat? Or coffee?”

  They had tea, sitting in her kitchen, and told her what they knew. The sudden collapse of defenses on the mainland had shocked everyone. These men had fought a rear-guard action near Kowloon itself, their efforts complicated by the fact that hundreds of Chinese in the town were shooting at them from the opposite direction. “And those Indian bastards, too,” said one of the soldiers feelingly.

  Men from the volunteer Navy, as their poor little craft were sunk, had taken to the hills above Aberdeen around to Stanley and were engaged in guerrilla warfare against Japanese who knew the game far better than these amateurs.

  Jill listened without comprehending. It sounded bad, but beyond that her mind refused to go. Of course it would turn out all right in the end. It always had, in all the books she had read and the movies she had seen. There would be a rescue at the last moment, or even after the last moment. The men seemed to share that faith, though they were dog-tired and didn’t really care what happened so long as they could stop wandering and being shot at. They ate something, but after resting a few minutes they had to be on their way.

  “What do you think I ought to do?” asked Jill as she saw them off. “Should I go somewhere else, do you think?”

  They shrugged, looking up at the hills and down toward the water front. “One place is likely to be as good as another,” they said in effect. “It’s only a little island, after all.”

  On the seventeenth of December Jill’s part of Happy Valley was cut off from British headquarters and the Japanese moved in. Had she known it, the telephone was still connected with the central switchboard for some hours; later there were stories of freak calls that went through for a long time after the entire district was taken over. But Jill had given up trying to reach Andy by phone. It did no good; most of the time his sister, hysterical and abusive, answered her calls, and at other times there was no reply at all.

  The amah did not appear that morning. Her room next to the kitchen was empty of all her belongings. She must have crept out and run away very early. Why the cook boy appeared Jill never understood, but perhaps he felt that the European influence was still worth something. He was with her when the first Japanese came down the street, marching in careless shuffle, their steps oddly muffled by the rubber shoes they wore. They walked past the house and out of sight.

  After them came more, no longer in formation, but raging for loot. They swarmed over the houses, pounding on doors or bursting through. Jill stood straight and still in her living room, waiting. She could hear screams and shouts from the house next door, and she saw a woman in coolie blue running out into the street, where she fell on her knees, sobbing aloud. There was an occasional hoarse shout from a Japanese, sounding breathless and rushed, but on the whole it was all quieter than Jill had ever expected the sack of a town to be. She was still standing in the same place when they came to her door.

  A small, pudgy soldier marched in and stopped short at sight of her. He had a beard and he smelled rank. He barked at her in Japanese: “What house is this?”

  She replied in his own language, “It is my house on this floor. What is it you want?”

  He was startled and then much more polite. “Are there any British soldiers here?” he asked. “The Imperial Army is in possession, and we are searching for the enemy.”

  “No soldiers are here. I am alone with my servant, but if the Imperial Army wishes to search …” She stepped back and invited him in with a gesture.

  It was this offer which saved her house for that day. The soldier, though he kept looking at her furtively, called in his mates, and she could hear him explaining that she was friendly and must not be harmed. They searched the place as a matter of course, but nothing was smashed, and though they took such liquor as she had, they went through the formality of asking her for it. It was the quality of her speech, perhaps, which impressed them. They were simple country people, she decided, but the man who had first entered had some authority, nevertheless, and he pasted a notice on her door which, he assured her, would prevent her being annoyed by more searching.

  He was too optimistic. The next few days, as the noise of conquest drove further on into the city, were feverish with more and more searches. Jill held audience all day with curious soldiers and occasionally their officers. Never had she talked so much, or answered the same questions so many times. At last there came a man called Tada, a major, who decided that he needed a flat just the size of Jill’s. He was on a special job that had to do with occupational policing, and he was not obsessed as the others had been with the necessity of billeting hundreds of men.

  “But I have nowhere else to go,” said Jill, dismayed.

  “Move into the house next door if you like,” said Tada. “Explain to the lady that it is military necessity, or I shall do it if you like.”

  “Next door is already full of soldiers,” Jill explained with truth. “All the neighborhood is full.” She was thinking as clearly as she could while they talked. Were the Japanese there to stay? Overhead the sky was crossed and crisscrossed with planes all through the daylight hours, but in Happy Valley she had almost stopped wincing at the sound, for no more bombs dropped in their part of the city. Over on the other side, yes, and the crashing of shells resounded from the hillsides by daylight and dark, but it had been a week now since Jill had caught even a glimpse of any soldiers other than the Japs. It was bewildering and terrifying, but somehow after the first part of the war it was not quite as terrifying as it had been. She was partially anesthetized. Andy, Rosemary, the old aching thought of Ray Macklin and Dorothy–it was as if they had never happened to her. She was aware of them as she was aware of people she had read about in novels. This new Happy Valley full of swaggering, short-legged men in khaki was all that she knew; she had simply embarked on another voyage, that was all–alone, as usual.

  The language and the harsh noises of command and the merrymaking which she overheard at night woke up another part of her mind which had been asleep for years. Tada did not look like Botchan, but while she talked to him she thought of her first lover, and with a bright, fresh keenness she recalled Kikusan’s house.

  Probably no other British woman in Hong Kong was as calm as Jill that day. What had she to fear? She was not afraid.

  Tada looked at her with a stirring interest, noticing her quietude. He took it for courage under immense difficulties, and he admired her, woman though she was.

  “I regret putting you to inconvenience,” he said courteously, “but war is war.” Tada was not a humanitarian; he had been with the conquering army at the sack of Nanking without being troubled by squeamishness, but on two counts Jill had penetrated his callous skin. She spoke good Japanese and she was brave. Now that he was interested he saw that she was pretty, from the foreign point of view. “You need not move out,” he said, “if you do not wish to. We can occupy this place together.”

  Jill bowed gratefully. Undoubtedly the Japanese were going to stay in Hong Kong for a certain amount of time, at any rate.…

  The anesthesia wore off a few days after Christmas Day, which marked the formal surrender of the Colony. There were no more shells lobbed across the bay, no more bombs were dropped anywhere within earshot, and the only fireworks one heard were those of rifle fire in the street at night, as zealous Japanese guards shot at shadows or Chinese bandits quarreled in filthy, reeking alleys over their loot.

  In the houses of the foreigners men and women asked each other how long it was going to be until the Chinese Army rescued them, marching from the hinterland–that unknown China, always so far away from the magic Colony, and now even farther away. Here and there in the town were ugly outbreaks of rioting. The Japanese soldiers had been told they were behaving well, as befitted conquerors of the gentlemanly British, and for the most part they left the white people alone. But the Chinese were fair prey. Wealthy households were sacked; scores of men were
shot down under pretense of military necessity; their women threw away their cosmetics and pretty dresses, trying, often vainly, to avoid rape. The soldiers whooped through the great public companies, chopping open safes and yet often leaving the contents to squabbling coolies; they drank wine and whisky and gin and champagne all together; they played a game of collecting wrist watches from civilians, each man trying to outdo his companions in decking his arm with dozens of them; forbidden by the officers to loot the biggest shops, they turned their attention to small ones, which would not be noticed.

  Yet on the whole, Tada told his new English mistress, they were behaving well. “They are being held in,” he said. “We want no more Nankings. We hold an empire now, and we must show that we know how to do it. This is a gentleman’s war.”

  “Oh yes,” said Jill. “I know.”

  The anesthesia was wearing off; she began to feel pain and memory. What had happened to everyone? Was it like this all over her world; were the Japanese burning and raping and looting in Shanghai as well? Had Christmas Day been the end of everything? She tried to fit Botchan into this new Japanese picture, but she could not. It would be no use asking Tada about him; indeed, it would probably be dangerous. She tried to ask less personal questions: Tada told her that America was wiped out because the fleet had been destroyed on the eighth of December, England had admitted she was finished, and the world would soon be divided equally between his Emperor and Hitler. She could see that he believed fully half of what he was saying, and it terrified her.

  Did he know this? Was he subtly amused by her horror when he boasted and swaggered and prophesied? Perhaps, but Jill depended on her experience; she knew that Tada was more likely to think of her as a mirror and an echo than as an actual audience. In his universe women loved the victorious army and wasted no time on fruitless regrets. She listened to him and smiled and served his food and poured his wine. Someday, no doubt, he would tell her what had happened to all the English.