by Hazel Gaynor
Without stopping to ask any questions, I hurried back to my bedroom and closed the door. Too afraid to switch on a light in case I drew the attention of the guards, I fumbled in the dark, placed the letter beneath my pillow, and climbed into bed fully clothed. I was restless and anxious, disturbed by every creak and crack from the dark corridors and empty classrooms. The sounds I’d once found familiar and comforting, I now didn’t trust at all. Beneath the bedcovers, I gripped the handle of my hockey stick. It wasn’t much, but it offered some small reassurance at least.
* * *
I woke at first light, relieved to have navigated the rest of the night without incident.
I pulled back the shutters to lend the room some light, and took the note from beneath my pillow. I guessed who it was from before I broke the seal. Inside was a delicate paper kingfisher and a paper lotus flower. On a small scrap of paper, the words Rise from the mud, and bloom were written. The intricate folded shapes held such kindness and simple beauty that I couldn’t help but smile. They were an important reminder that even while the world was at war, it was still possible to touch someone’s heart; still possible to think of others. I hoped Shu Lan was safe. I couldn’t bear to think of her suffering again as she had already suffered once before.
I put the papers onto the bedcovers and walked to the window. Outside, a couple of the guards—Home Run, and the silent one the children called Charlie Chaplin—sat quietly beneath the plane trees where I’d read to the girls that summer. I wondered if they knew how deeply their intrusion had affected us, if they understood that without dropping any bombs, they’d destroyed, just as violently, the sense of safety and harmony that had always existed here?
Before I’d arrived in China, I hadn’t really thought about what it would mean to teach the children of missionaries and diplomats. I was just pleased to get the position, and to be leaving the suffocating claustrophobia of home. It wasn’t until the end of my second term when I’d fully understood that the children could be separated from their parents for months on end, or how uncomfortable that would make me feel.
A number of the children had now been apart from their parents for two years or more, and none of us could offer any firm reassurance as to when they would see them again. For some, it was too much to bear. They’d become withdrawn and morose, too young to understand why their parents had chosen to put the work of the mission before them; too polite and well behaved to complain. As their teachers, we saw how much the children struggled and suffered, we heard their stifled sobs and calmed them down after a nightmare, and yet their mothers and fathers saw only the well-educated, well-presented children they came to collect whenever their work allowed. The contradiction didn’t sit well with me, and as I stood at the window, watching the two young soldiers talk quietly to each other and share stories of the photographs they pulled from their pockets, I dared to wonder the unspeakable: that Japan wasn’t the only enemy. Perhaps the very British status and privilege that had taken Chefoo’s children thousands of miles away from home were as much to blame for the situation they now found themselves in—separated from their families; cut off from the rest of the world.
I thought of Lillian Plummer, and the impromptu promise I’d made to her on the wharf in Shanghai. She must know by now that the school was under Japanese guard. As Charlie had proven with his makeshift radio, and Tom with his secret contact, despite Japan’s occupation of China, there was always some way to get information. Was Lillian desperately waiting for news, or was she confident in our ability to manage the situation? I thought of my own agony in not knowing where Alfie was, and not knowing how to help him. Was the agony of prolonged separation from a loved one worse than the finality of death? I’d known both, and I didn’t have an answer.
I closed the shutters, and turned away from the window.
I didn’t have an answer for any of this.
Chapter 9
Nancy
Nobody talked about the fact that it was nearly Christmas. Even when we had our final rehearsal for the Christmas carol concert and sang my favorite, “O! Holy Night,” I didn’t feel excited. If anything, the fact that it was nearly Christmas only made me feel sadder about everything being as it was and not as it should be.
The teachers put on a good show of everything going along quite nicely, and did their best to jolly us along with games of winter rounders and brisk walks to the bay. Miss Kent and Miss Butterworth found clever ways to make challenges and games from our chores: who could make their bed the fastest, who had the best hospital corners, and who could fold their clothes the neatest. We became so good at making our beds and keeping the dorm tidy, that I wondered why we’d ever needed Shu Lan and the other servants to do it for us.
After a busy day of lessons and exercise and doing our share of domestic chores, we fell into our beds exhausted, too tired to talk about the usual things like who we would marry, and how many children we wanted to have. We always remembered to say a prayer for our liberation, no matter how tired we were, but although I said the words and the Amen along with the others, I wasn’t absolutely certain God was listening. Mouse said that with the whole world at war, there must be so many people saying so many prayers that He couldn’t possibly have time to answer them all.
“Don’t you wish you’d gone home for Christmas, Mouse?” I asked as we walked to breakfast together. Sprout had been sent back to the San because of her cough, so I’d paired up with Mouse instead. Her hand was bony and cold in mine. It felt like holding a bundle of frosty sticks.
“I don’t really mind. I prefer being here,” she mumbled. She kept her gaze fixed on her scuffed shoes. Sprout said Mouse’s eyes looked like they’d fallen too far into her face and might disappear entirely if she wasn’t careful. I just thought she looked unbearably sad all the time.
“Don’t you miss your mother though?” I pressed, prepared to do most of the talking. “I miss mine terribly. I sometimes get a pain in my tummy when I think about her. Sprout calls it a Mummy Ache! She says the funniest things, doesn’t she!”
“My mother died when I was a baby.”
I stopped walking. I wasn’t sure which was worse: to discover that Mouse’s mother was dead, or to realize it had taken me two whole years to find out.
“Gosh, Mouse. That’s awfully sad.”
She shrugged. “Not really. How can you be sad about someone you never knew?”
I didn’t have an answer for that. “But there must be photographs of her? And what about your father?” I hardly dared ask if she had any brothers or sisters I’d never heard of.
“He’s busy with his work at the embassy in Shanghai. I’m only a nuisance to him when I’m at home.”
I tightened my grip on her hand as we walked on. “Why didn’t you say anything before? About your mother?”
She hesitated for a moment before she turned to look at me. “Nobody ever asked.”
We walked the rest of the way to the dining room in silence.
* * *
I didn’t have much of an appetite that morning, which was just as well. Another thing that had changed since the soldiers had arrived were the reduced portions at mealtimes. Two boiled potatoes each instead of three, and only one slice of beef, and no second helpings.
“I didn’t think we’d see rationing quite so soon,” Edward said when I mentioned it to him. “But it’s sensible of the teachers to be cautious. Just in case.”
“Just in case what?” I asked.
“In case we’re here longer than anyone is expecting.” He looked ever so serious when he spoke.
“How long is longer than anyone is expecting?”
He glanced at me and shook his head. “Wars can go on for years, Nonny. I’m afraid we could be here for a very long time.”
It wasn’t like Edward to be so gloomy. It made me feel all prickly and sad.
We were all gathered in the assembly hall, where several of us had turned the PE benches upside down so we could practice our gymnastics.
Me and Mouse spent an hour pretending we were on the beam in an Olympic competition. Mouse was very good at it, but I wobbled off more than I stayed on.
“You’ll have to keep practicing if you’re ever going to make the British team.” Edward teased.
He had his sights firmly set on being an Olympic runner, like his hero, Eric Liddell, who’d won gold at the Paris Olympics and, by funny coincidence, now worked as a missionary in northern China. Edward had once asked Daddy about him in a letter home. Have you come across Mr. Liddell on your travels? If you do, would you tell him I’d very much like to meet him one day.
But Edward didn’t go on about Mr. Liddell or the Olympics that afternoon. Even Larry Crofton couldn’t cheer him up. He went off to talk to some of the other boys instead.
“I still believe the Navy will come to rescue us, Edward,” I said as I watched Larry saunter across the hall in that ever-so-confident way of his. “I suspect they’re just terribly busy with the other bits of the war.” I offered him a mint imperial to cheer him up.
He smiled half-heartedly and ruffled my hair. “Where’d you get the mints?” he asked. “Not from Home Run, I hope?”
I stared at a gap between the floorboards, my answer written all over my face.
“You’re such a silly girl, Nonny. I told you not to talk to him.”
“But he’s one of the nice ones,” I said. “He wants the war to end, and to go home, just as much as we do.”
Home Run had shown me and Mouse a photograph of his children, who were the same age as us. He’d told us he missed them, and his home near the ocean. He sometimes gave us a piece of fresh fruit, or a few sweets, as long as we promised not to tell the others, or our teachers.
Edward wasn’t convinced that any of the guards were nice. “Just be careful,” he cautioned. “I don’t trust him. I don’t trust any of them.”
Whatever Edward thought, I didn’t believe Home Run was a bad man, or the same as all the other soldiers. If I believed that, what hope was there for any of us?
Chapter 10
Elspeth
Penny for them?” Minnie said as we took a stroll around the cricket pitch, closely watched from a distance by Trouble and his minions. “You’re awfully quiet today.”
“Sorry, Min. I’m tired, and I have a thumping headache.”
“Is it your Alfie?” She lowered her voice as she spoke, the way we all did whenever we mentioned news from home, which wasn’t often. Since the outbreak of war in Europe, we’d learned to carefully avoid discussing anything that might provoke an emotional response, as if it were an infection we might catch if we got too close.
I nodded. “How did you know?”
“I always know.” She smiled. “You might think you’re a closed book, but I know you better than you think.”
“It’s like he’s disappeared off the face of the earth, and I’m stuck here and can’t do a thing about it.” I couldn’t hide the fear and frustration in my voice.
“Try not to worry, Els dear.” She placed her hand on my shoulder. “I’m sure he’s safe and well. Chin up, eh.”
I smiled thinly, grateful for her concern and reassurance, but I couldn’t share her optimism. Alfie’s absence worried me greatly and my concern only increased with each day that passed without any word from him, or my mother.
With letters from home no longer reliably getting through to us, we were as starved of news and information as we were of a decent meal. When we listened for the faint crackle of a signal on Charlie’s radio, it felt like listening for the splash of a stone dropped into a deep well. Each night, we dropped our pebbles of hope and listened for an echo, for news of an Allied victory, or something to let us know our loved ones were safe, or at the very least, to give us hope.
“I just wish I could be out there, looking for him, demanding some answers from the Ministry, but what can I do, stuck here, with them watching our every move?”
I was beginning to resent Chefoo School and all its privileges. I shouldn’t have even been there. I should have been sitting in the puddle of winter sunlight at the kitchen table back home in York, sharing a pot of tea with my mother. I should have been waiting for the rattle of the milk van down the lane, and the squeak of the front gate as the postman called. I should have been picking snowdrops from the garden and walking by the mill race and watching the minnows in the shallows by the riverbank.
“I’m sure Alfie’s worried about you, too. He’ll be ever so proud when he hears about all this,” Minnie added. “It’s not everyone can say they have a sister in China, making a jolly good fist of things, despite being under armed guard.”
Would Alfie be proud? Or worried? He was the only one who’d encouraged me to come to China. All anyone else had said was, Why China? Why leave Yorkshire at all? But not Alfie. He’d put his arm around my shoulder and said, Why not? What have you got to lose? Plenty, as it turned out. I had plenty to lose.
“Are you hoping to hear from anyone?” I asked, to change the subject. “From home?”
“Not especially,” she replied. “Mother was never one for letter-writing. She’s a woman of very few words.”
“And there’s nobody else who might write?”
Minnie picked up her pace a little. “No. There’s nobody else.” She pushed her hands into her coat pockets. “Come along. We’d better get back.”
* * *
As Christmas approached, a dozen children were confined to the San with coughs and chest infections brought on by the cold weather. I hated to see any of the children poorly, but it was especially hard around Christmastime. Dorothy Hinshaw’s cough bothered me particularly. The child hadn’t been in full health since she’d returned from a holiday to the coast with her parents that summer.
The most senior school nurse, Eve Walsh (known rather cruelly as “Prune” to the children because of her wrinkled skin) wasn’t happy with Dorothy’s health either.
“I’d like to see an improvement soon,” she said. “She usually bounces back much faster.”
Nurse Eve was a temperate soul and a very sensible, practical woman. I liked her a lot, and was very glad she was with us, along with two other school nurses. I had a horrible feeling we would need their experience more than ever in the weeks ahead.
As part of our roster for the day-to-day running of the school, I’d volunteered to assist in the Sanitorium when required.
“It was always assumed I would go into nursing,” I said as I helped to organize and count the medical supplies. “My mother was a nurse with the British Red Cross and my great-grandmother trained as a Nightingale. She served under the great lady herself in the Crimea.”
“Really! Gosh. That’s quite the thing.” Nurse Eve frowned as she rummaged through boxes of medicine bottles and sterilizing fluid. “So why didn’t you? Become a nurse? I’d say you’d have been rather suited to it.”
I marked the tally for calamine lotion, camphor, and gauze on my sheet as Nurse Eve called them out to me. “I’m not really sure. Stubbornness, probably. Determined to do something different to prove to my mother that I didn’t always have to follow her plan for me.”
“Teaching is an admirable profession. She must be very proud of you.”
I laughed. “I don’t think my mother has ever been proud of me. I’m afraid I’m rather a perpetual disappointment to her. When the idea of nursing was abandoned, she suggested I become a shopgirl in a department store, like my cousin. Mother thought it was quite refined, as far as shop work goes. ‘They wear evening dresses in the afternoons, Elspeth.’”
Nurse Eve chuckled as I imitated my mother. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t become a shopgirl,” she said. “It would be a shame if a talented teacher like you spent her days serving silly posh knickers to silly posh people.”
“Thankfully, I’ve never paid much attention to what my mother wanted me to do. The department store was destroyed by a Nazi bomb last December. My cousin was killed. It could so easily have been me.”
Nur
se Eve turned to look at me as the now familiar shouting of bayonet practice started up outside. “It could still be you, Elspeth. It could be any one of us, at any time.” She closed the cupboard door and stood up with a sigh. “Let’s hope everyone’s in good health this winter. There’s just about enough to see us through the usual coughs and colds, but if there’s an outbreak of a more serious infection . . .” She shook her head as we moved on to organize the linen cupboard.
“What about using traditional Chinese medicine,” I suggested. “Wei Huan told me they use ginseng, cinnamon, licorice, and something called wolfberry.”
She laughed and said it sounded more like a list of ingredients for a Christmas cake than medicine. “I shouldn’t scoff,” she added as she placed her hands on her hips and let out a weary sigh. “If we’re here for the foreseeable, cinnamon and licorice might be our only option.”
I couldn’t sleep that night. I lay awake in the dark, thinking about our dwindling medical supplies. With the Shanghai International Settlement now under the control of the Imperial Japanese Army, we were completely cut off from all financial and supply support from Mission HQ. At that evening’s staff meeting, Minnie and Eleanor had also reported that food supplies were worse than we’d thought. I didn’t understand how stock had dwindled so quickly. Although deliveries from Mission HQ in Shanghai had become increasingly unreliable in the months before the soldiers had arrived, held up by bad weather and the many checkpoints established to deliberately cause disruption across the country, and while rationing back home had also seen imports from Britain stop some time ago, we’d still believed we had sufficient supplies to see us through several months. We’d even done one more food drop over the wall, after which we’d decided it was probably best to leave it for a while, in case we aroused suspicion.
Certain the two women had miscounted, and unable to rest until I’d checked, I threw on my slippers and housecoat, and crept from my room. My hand lamp cast disconcerting shadows against the walls of the long corridors as I made my way down to the kitchens.