“What now?” Thomas asked with gloomy resignation.
“Churchill’s views on Asia. I can put you in the picture. Briefly, he feels that nothing east of Singapore is worth defending. Hong Kong can go under if the Japanese attack. If it comes to it—he’s really thinking cosmically—Australia can go under to be liberated later. But Churchill expects Singapore to hold. Singapore and China, he says, can look after themselves against the Japs. Shall I go on?”
“Not unless you have something more concrete. What you’ve told me is bad enough. It bears out what I’ve been hearing, explains why Britain and France have given us less than $95 million U.S. There’ll be no more, either. How they’ve resisted Japanese pressure to close the Hanoi-Kunming Railroad and the Burma Road this long I don’t know. But they won’t much longer. Then, barring a miracle, we’ll be isolated—totally isolated, except for a few daredevil flights from Hong Kong and small coasters sneaking into the small East China ports we still control.”
“It’s hardly a common struggle, is it?” Charles mused.
“It is, I tell you. It is a common struggle, but our allies, those who should be our allies, they’re too complacent or too frightened to understand.”
“What … I know the question’s naive, Tom, but what can China do? What can the Gimo do?”
“Do? There’s only one thing to do. We’ll fight. The Gimo won’t give in. We’ll fight the Jap dwarves and the Communist bandits. We’ll fight!”
China did fight—and the interminable war of attrition on the mainland of Asia continued. Yet both Nationalists and Communists devoted most of their resources to fighting each other. Feuding among themselves and skirmishing with their warlord allies, the Nationalists commanded larger forces and nominally controlled larger areas. The Communists intelligently utilized the aid they received from the Soviet Union. Their cohesion, their shrewd political warfare, and their firm discipline were all dedicated to one unwavering purpose, the eventual conquest of all China.
The mainland of Europe, the seed bed and the bastion of Western civilization, also fought against the two-fold threat from the east. At least, some West Europeans fought, but none effectively. The phony war ended when Hitler preempted Britain’s plans to gain control of the Baltic by invading Norway on April 9, 1940. While the British and French were trying to riposte and fighting continued in the Baltic, columns of Nazi Panzerwagen supported by motorized infantry began rolling over Holland and Belgium. Other columns struck at France through the “impassable” Ardennes Forests. The impenetrable Maginot Line was outflanked, its great garrison reduced to spectators. On the same day the German Blitzkrieg struck, May 10, 1940, Winston Churchill succeeded Neville Chamberlain as the First Minister of State of His Majesty King George VI.
Between May 10 and June 22, when France formally surrendered, Adolf Hitler was to make himself master of the European continent from the Mediterranean Sea to the Arctic Ocean, from the English Channel to the Bug River, where his troops faced their new friends, the Soviets. The phony war was over. All illusions and all hopes of peace were trampled under the jackboats of the invincible Wehrmacht, and the Wehrmacht was poised to attack England.
Amid the universal catastrophe, those who could save themselves did so. Charlotte Sekloong Way d’Alivère received a peremptory telegram from Hong Kong in late-May, just after her brother, Monsignor Charles Sekloong, called at the demi-mansion off the Faubourg St. Honoré for the last time. He repeated at length the injunction their parents’ telegram expressed briefly: “Flee. Get out while you still can.”
Truly concerned about another human being for the first time in her life, Charlotte pleaded on the telephone with Raymond d’Alivère: “Let me take Alaine with me,” she begged. “Let me take her to a place where she’ll be safe.” But the Comte de Samlieu brusquely rejected her pleas. France would not fall, he insisted. And if France did fall, well, he could undoubtedly make his own arrangements with the Germans. The German armies were after all led by men of his own class, even if Hitler himself was a guttersnipe. “And,” he reminded her, “you are not to use the title once the annulment is approved.”
After listening to the last words Raymond was ever to speak to her, Charlotte prepared to leave France. Air and rail tickets were impossible to obtain, despite the pressure she tried to exert through her influential friends, who were primarily concerned with their own escape. The Comtesse de Samlieu finally left Paris in her boxcarlike red Rolls-Royce. The vehicle’s dignity was marred by the valises and trunks tied to its roof, but the winged angel atop the radiator pointed south toward Spain, Portugal, and safety. Beside her, Randall Martin was relaxed with a glass of brandy in his hand and cockily unafraid.
“Look, Charl, it’s gonna be all right,” he repeated. “We’ll get married in Lisbon, and then no sweat. As the wife of an American, you just sail right into the good old U.S.A. You’re practically an American, already. Hell, we’re Americans, and we’re neutral. Leave these people to their own mess. They can’t touch us.”
December 8, 1941–December 26, 1941
The frail hands, liver-spotted with age, riffled the pages of the blue-leather-bound ledger, and the strong mouth above the white beard pursed. At seven on the morning of Monday, December 8, 1941, the Old Gentleman had already been awake for two hours. Having said his prayers and eaten a light breakfast, he was basking in the sunshine on the veranda overlooking the sweep of Hong Kong Harbor and the Kowloon Hills that cupped Kaitak Airport. The words his hazel eyes read were a deliberate jumble of elided Chinese, still-remembered Jesuit Latin, and his own English abbreviations. Stamped in gold on the ledger’s cover was the winged dragon above the title: PERSONAL DIARY FOR 1941, THE 88TH YEAR OF THE LIFE OF SIR JONATHAN SEKLOONG, KCMG. His body’s feebleness had affected neither his domineering will nor his incisive mind, and he automatically translated his code into plain language as he read:
January 20, 1941: That rapscallion James is the center of a storm of trouble again. God preserve me from another such descendant, unfilial and bullheaded—in short, a Communist. He and his treacherous chief Liu Shao-chi are Political Commissar and Deputy Political Commissar of the New Fourth Army. That Communist army is a unit of the National Forces and sworn to obey the orders of the Generalissimo, who is the best fool we have. He ordered them to move northward, away from Shanghai, in late 1940, but they refused. Instead, the New Fourth Army extended its tentacles southward, impeding operations of Nationalist units.
Chungking was very patient, but the Communists, inspired by that unholy pair, James and Liu Shao-chi, kept pushing outward. On January 5 of this year, the Gimo’s patience was exhausted. The loyal 40th Division fell on the New Fourth’s Headquarters and captured the commanding general. There was a bitter fight, the first major Nationalist—Communist clash since the United Front agreement. But the stealthy red foxes had already withdrawn most of their troops.
On January 17, Central Headquarters ordered the New Fourth disbanded. The Communists simply appointed a new commander and proclaimed a new Soviet Area. So, once again, James Sekloong, who calls himself Major General Shih Ai-kuo, is an outlaw, in revolt against the legitimate government. The ancestors frown in disapproval.
I am surprised that the Communists didn’t attack first. They have been harrying the Gimo’s tottering coalition everywhere, trying to destroy the Nationalists. Mao Tse-tung’s strategy has been obvious since mid-1939, when he established several “independent” Communist governments in the north and northwest—after promising to subordinate himself to the National Government under the Gimo’s orders. The split is now open, though neither Nationalists nor Communists want to resume full-scale hostilities against each other.
January 21, 1941: Mary came to see me alone today; she wouldn’t even have Opal in the room while we talked. The topic, naturally, James. I sometimes think she loves that child more than all the others together. Of course, he’s Harry’s son, and Harry was her great passion. She didn’t weep. I’ve never seen Mary weep. Odd,
that! But her voice quavered. She didn’t mention Harry, never does, and I don’t like thinking about that boy. I went wrong badly with Harry. If I’d been harder on him, quashed his nonsensical idealism, things would’ve turned out differently.
Mary is desperately worried about James, and complained that none of us have seen his children, a ten-year-old son and a one-year-old daughter by that Bolshevik peasant wife of his.
First time I’ve heard Mary talk so foolishly. Perhaps it’s her age. She’s getting on, sixty-one this year. She says we must do something about James. Try to get him out of China and back to Hong Kong. She talks about a thirty-four-year-old paterfamilias as if he were still a small boy. If we got him out by some miracle, I asked, would he stay long? He’s not married to that creature Lu Ping, but to the blasted Communist Party.
Could we not, she asked, at least find out whether he was well and what needs we might supply him with? I told her he was well, I’d had word through the blockade runners. But he wouldn’t take anything from us—except arms or funds for his precious New Fourth Army. And I’m not supplying my country’s enemies, not at my age.
Could she communicate with him, if nothing else? Surely, I said, let me have your letter. But don’t expect an answer. He’s Harry’s son, I said, what can you expect? Just like his father, he’s cut himself off from his family and the legal government. Made himself an outlaw.
Naturally, she didn’t weep. But she was shaky when she finally left. What else could I do or say? But Opal, eavesdropping as usual, scolded me for being too harsh. And she asked why my own eyes were wet.
January 25, 1941: They celebrated the hundredth anniversary of Hong Kong’s formal founding today, and I had to go down to Statue Square and sit like some animated Buddha. Felt like wearing a tweed suit, instead of a long-gown, just to shock them. But I look so damned European in Western clothing, and Opal said they’d just laugh at me.
They could have used a laugh. Dreariest ceremony I’ve seen in ages. Not much jollity, though they turned out an honor guard from the Middlesex Regiment. Britain with her back to the wall in Europe isn’t the Britain that acquired Hong Kong almost absentmindedly when Captain Elliot did as he damned pleased, sailed through the Emperor’s war junks, annexed Hong Kong—and then let Milord Palmerston in London sort out the tangle until they finally made it legal this day a century ago. Lord, a century ago. Just a little over thirteen years before I was born. It’s not only Mary who’s getting older!
March 6, 1941: Iain Wheatley came crying to me again. You’d think he’d have better things to do at his age, almost sixty-seven. But he’s still full of Wheatley malice and cunning. This time he came to plead, though he’s done that before too. I was ruining Derwent’s, he said—I, who made the hong, building on my grandfather’s work. Wouldn’t I call off my boycott? he begged.
My boycott, I asked? I told him I had nothing to do with it. If the overseas Chinese don’t want to trade with a firm that’s hand-in-glove with the Jap dwarves, what could I do? He swore he had cut his ties with Mitsubishi. (Not true! They’re still thick as the thieves they both are!) Then he promised he would break off, if only I’d call off the boycott, the sabotage, and the financial pressure.
Told him I wouldn’t if I could—and I couldn’t. Then, a true Wheatley, he turned nasty. Said he’d break me, drag me down with him. Cut off my credit in London. Call all my loans from the Gazetted Bank and get the Bank of England to look into my currency transactions. A Wheatley cousin is on the Board of Governors.
Laughed and told him to get out. But I called Judah Haleevie and Mosing Way and asked them to cover my flanks. If Wheatley really wants to take on the Rothschilds and Warburgs who’re backing me, let him. He’ll just destroy himself. For good measure, suggested to the Green Band that they step up pressure on Derwent’s people here. A little judicious violence never hurts, but they’re not to kill.
Later, Mary came to see me. She was happy because that rascal James had answered her letter. Said only that he was well and hoped to see the family when “conditions permitted.” (What “conditions”?) I didn’t shoot down her hopes, but told her, instead, of Iain Wheatley’s visit. She was all for driving the Wheatleys to the wall, and Charles came in to add his counsel for “all-out war, war to the knife.” Both said we’d put up with Wheatleys too long.
Just what I wanted, now that I’ve got Derwent’s in a noose that’s drawing tighter every day. I said fine, we’d do it—we’d break them. But I wasn’t quite comfortable with the idea. Maybe I’ve gotten so used to them as enemies, that I’d miss them. Besides, there is the family connection, however thin. Old Dick, the lying old scoundrel, was my step-father, though precious little help he gave me.
But, I said: Fine, we’d really let loose, and we were impregnable because of the depth of our investments abroad, not to speak of our allies and owning half Wanchai and the New Territories.
Charles was all for it, but Mary got cold feet when we started planning the new campaign. Curious, Charles seems to get stronger all the time. Mary said we’d better think about it. If we drove Derwent’s into bankruptcy, many others would go down with them—and we’d be blamed, we’d face the hostility of all the European hongs. Moreover, many innocents would suffer—investors, employees, etc. Besides, she said, we wouldn’t be absolutely sure of crushing them, and it was foolish to shoot at a king unless you were certain of killing him.
Charles finally agreed it was better just to keep up the pressure, not go for the kill. Mary’s arguments convinced both of us. She’s an extraordinary woman, almost as tough as the Old Empress Dowager. Besides, I think she felt my own mood, knew I wasn’t that keen. Uncanny!
June 2, 1941: I want the women to leave—and take Albert with them. Almost all European women were forced to leave Hong Kong a year ago because of the presumed threat from the Japanese. There’s much resentment against those of us whose women have remained. I raised the matter with Mary, Charles, Sarah, and Jonnie. The boys agreed, reluctantly. But the ladies were adamant. They would not leave their men behind to face danger without them. We finally worked out a compromise. Albert, who’s only seven, will go either to Charlotte or Gwinnie in America. No point in sending him from the hypothetical danger of an attack on Hong Kong to the real danger of England under bombardment. His older brother Henry is already at Stonyhurst, so that’s another matter. Besides, even the Germans wouldn’t want to bomb that great pile in the middle of nowhere.
The solution’s unsatisfactory, but I’ve learned I can’t oppose the combined wills of Mary and Sarah. Perhaps I’m getting old after all. Charles and Jonnie were of two minds themselves, though they knew damned well other dangers beside the Japanese hang over us. But they refused to order their wives to leave. Partly, I think, because they doubt the danger, partly because they don’t want to leave them, and partly because they’re not sure the ladies would obey. Damned modern nonsense, giving women their heads.
Some satisfaction in telling the Governor Mary and Sarah were not subject to the evacuation order because they were technically Chinese. He laughed and changed the subject.
August 5, 1941: We had our first bomb last night—not Japanese, but Triads. A small explosion in the garden, meant to frighten. Iain Wheatley’s getting desperate. I’ve put out the word: relax the pressure on Derwent’s slightly. When it comes on again, it’ll hurt even more. I’ve also asked Judah Haleevie to persuade the Rothschilds to renegotiate their loans to Derwent’s on slightly better terms. I can buy the paper when I wish—and then, perhaps, close my hand and crush Iain Wheatley. I’ll decide later.
December 3, 1941: Last night Sir Robert and Lady Mary Hotung celebrated their Diamond Jubilee. Not bad, married sixty years. Young Robert must be almost as old as I. But I’ll outlive him yet. The Gripps at the Hong Kong Hotel was blinding with uniforms, decorations, medals and jewels. All the Hotung ladies wore traditional Chinese dress, not cheongsams but nineteenth-century Court costumes. Looked like a Cantonese opera troupe to me, but i
t pleased them. I wore my cross of a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George. Robert is only a knight bachelor, poor chap. But he’s been very helpful in the work of the China Relief Committee and in our unpublicized squeeze on the Wheatleys. A patriot and a good man, even if inclined to ostentatious showiness when he gives a party. Bad taste!
Unconfirmed reports that the Japanese were moving up three divisions to the border. The Volunteers called up, and Jonnie went off to his unit in high spirits. Returned shortly. False alarm. No orders to mobilize. Charles a staff colonel at Defense Command Headquarters, commuting, as he says, to the war that isn’t.
Opal came onto the veranda carrying a cup of hot milk.
“Drink this down, Old One,” she directed, shivering in the breeze.
Sir Jonathan sipped and waved her away. It was, he concluded, an interesting record of a remarkable year, though some other years had been even more exciting. Nonetheless, it was good to review the record and see how the Family had fared during the year. Reviewing the record also gave him a chance to fill any gaps. He picked up his pen and began writing.
December 8, 1941: I decided in late November to let the Wheatleys survive, now that they’re humbled. It would be no credit to my grandfather’s memory or my beloved mother’s to extinguish the firm he virtually created and she nurtured. Curiously, Mary is now opposed to relenting. We’ve already hurt the Wheatleys so badly, she argued, their enmity would be a constant danger to us. She wanted me to close my hand. Charles and Jonnie agreed with me; they are Sekloongs by blood and they understand my motives. But I must be careful. Mary may be right.
The British are behaving as usual. That is to say with a combination of calm courage, bovine complacency, and profound stupidity. At least they finally mobilized the Volunteers yesterday, Sunday. My informants tell me the Japanese are moving right up to the border, an entire army corps. On Saturday, December 6, Japanese civilians scurried away to Canton. But that same night at the Peninsula Hotel, the British staged something they called a “Tin Hat Ball.” The idea was to finish raising the sum of £160,000 for the bomber squadron Hong Kong has presented to Britain.
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