When We Were Young & Brave

by Hazel Gaynor

  “Hello again, Elspeth Kent.”

  I recognized Trouble’s voice immediately. My stomach lurched with a familiar sense of dread as I took a deep breath and turned around to address him.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” I said, before walking on, heart thumping in my chest.

  He laughed, sarcastically, but let me continue on my way.

  I walked faster, my breaths coming fast and shallow as I stared straight ahead, and hurried on.

  * * *

  “I see our friend Trouble turned up like a bad penny,” Charlie said. He was helping me fix boarding over the broken windows while Minnie kept the girls occupied by reading to them from the Bible. “I thought we’d seen the back of him.”

  “Me, too.” I sighed. “I haven’t told Minnie yet.”

  “Best not. Not on the first night anyway. Give it a few days.”

  I wanted to tell him about the threats Trouble had made to me, never mind Minnie, but I couldn’t find the words, and besides, I was too embarrassed to say anything to a man.

  “We’ll have to keep Tinkerbell well out of sight of Major Kosaka and his dog,” I said, changing the subject. “He makes Commander Hayashi look like Father Christmas.”

  “Maybe, but I still think we’re better off under the command of the Consular guards,” he replied. “They’re former diplomats, mostly. Well-educated family men. I don’t think they intend to harm us, just cause enough discomfort to remind us we’re the enemy and that they have the upper hand. It would be far worse if we were under the Imperial Army or the dreaded kempeitai—the military police. You know about the dreadful atrocities in other parts of Asia.”

  I nodded. “I wish I didn’t.”

  “And I’m sure we’ve only heard the half of it,” he agreed. “I dread to think of the stories that will emerge after liberation.”

  “Do you think the Allies will be victorious soon?” I asked, ever hopeful that Charlie had picked up some news on his little radio, which he’d managed to keep hidden from the guards during our relocation. “It all seems to be going on for such a terribly long time.”

  Charlie stopped his hammering. His shoulders slumped as he pushed his hair from his eyes and wiped dust from his cheeks with the back of his hand. “Honestly?”

  “Honestly.”

  “I don’t know. All I can be sure of is that we won’t be here for just a few nights. If I were you, Elspeth, I’d start to make yourself at home and try to make peace with it. I think we could be here for a long time yet.”

  Whether it was the kindness in his gaze, or the brutal honesty I’d craved for so long, I wasn’t sure, but tears welled up in my eyes and I couldn’t stop them spilling onto my cheeks.

  “Oh, dear. I’m terribly sorry.” Charlie fumbled as he searched for a handkerchief from his pocket. “I’ve upset you. I shouldn’t have . . .”

  “Yes.” I sniffed as I wiped my tears away with his handkerchief. “Yes, Charlie, you should. I’m tired of all the false optimism.” I sighed and leaned against the wall. “I’m just ever so tired of it all.”

  He offered a reassuring smile and placed his hand on my arm. “We all are. And you’re doing remarkably well, you know. You’re much stronger than you think. And the children! Goodness, how they look up to you.”

  “To me?”

  “Yes! To you. Don’t sound so surprised!” He picked up his tools and stepped back to inspect his handiwork. “That’ll have to do for now. It’s all any of us can do, Elspeth. Patch things up to make them better. You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.”

  But despite Charlie’s assurances, I lay awake in the loft that first night at Temple Hill, my mind turning over everything as Minnie snored beside me. Her hand was clasped tight around her hockey stick, just as mine was clasped tightly around mine. We were both painfully aware of the lack of protection they would offer should the soldiers decide to march upstairs, but somehow, they made us both feel safer.

  I shivered as a full moon sent shadows dancing on the walls. I tensed at every unfamiliar creak and crack, and held my breath as the guards’ boots crunched over the gravel beyond the windows. I flinched at the growls of their dogs, straining on their leads.

  I only relaxed when the first hint of daylight tiptoed through the shutters. Only then did I let myself drift into a sleep of pure exhaustion. I dreamed of a child cradled safely in my arms, protected from some dark threat I couldn’t see, but which I sensed with every fiber of my soul. And in the child’s impossibly small hand, I held the trust of dozens of children, all desperate for a mother’s protection, all longing for the reassuring touch of loving arms wrapped around them.

  I slept for what felt like only moments before I was woken by Dorothy coughing and wheezing. I lay awake, watching her, wishing there was more I could do to help her, to help them all.

  As the early morning light bathed the room in violet, the girls looked so peaceful, and yet they were so vulnerable. There’d been many moments in the past year when I’d been afraid for myself, but my greatest fear, when I dared to admit it, was losing one of the children. Not only would it have a profound impact on everyone’s fragile emotional state, but I also worried deeply about how we would let the parents know. We were so cut off from the rest of the world. So completely alone. It made me fearful of liberation; fearful of what we might find waiting for us on the other side.

  Charlie was right. I had done my best, and I would continue to do so until the end came. Until then, I was a lonely shepherdess with her flock of lambs. I knew it would be only a matter of time before I would lose one of them.

  Chapter 16

  Nancy

  None of us liked the new school.

  It was horrid: uncomfortable, cold, and unwelcoming, and our new commander shouted even more than the last. Most of all, we hated the daily roll call in the compound square. Sprout had picked up another cold as a result of being forced to stand around in all weather. We sometimes had to wait for an age as we each called out our assigned number in Japanese, just so they could be sure nobody had escaped, which was highly unlikely with guards at every gate. We all wished we were back in our classroom at Chefoo School, with Miss Kent at the front in one of her pretty cardigans, ticking our names off the register.

  The only good thing about Temple Hill was that our lessons became a bit more interesting. Master Harris knew a lot about the stars and planets and took us in small groups to the boys’ house, where they’d set up a makeshift observatory in the loft. Edward and Larry had helped to make a Newtonian reflector—a small telescope made from the lens from a pair of binoculars, a mirror from one of the teachers’ powder compacts, and various bits of wood and cardboard they’d found in an abandoned outhouse. They were very proud of it and let us take turns to look through it after dark. I found Orion’s Belt, and the Plough, and what I think might have been Jupiter, although I wasn’t sure if I was looking at the right thing. My head was soon full of light-years and galaxies and the unfathomable size of the universe. It made me feel awfully small, but it also made me keen to learn more about it.

  “Can girls be astronomers?” I asked as I helped Miss Kent clean the downstairs windows one morning. “Or is that just for boys?”

  “Of course girls can be astronomers! Girls can do anything boys can, and often do it much better, although don’t tell your brother I said that. Why do you ask?”

  “I like learning about the stars and planets. Master Harris makes it all sound so interesting, but I think my father would prefer me to go into nursing.”

  Miss Kent tutted and rubbed vigorously at a mark on the glass. “I’m sure your father can be talked around when he sees how enthusiastic and clever you are. Fathers are funny things. They might seem all stiff and serious, but they’re not so bad underneath. He might surprise you.”

  “Is your father nice, Miss?”

  Her hand settled against the glass. “He was, yes. Ever so nice. One of the kindest men you’d ever meet. He died in the last war. I still remember the
day the telegram arrived.”

  I didn’t often think about my father, and when I did, I found that I mostly remembered him talking to Edward about cricket and football. Other than the occasional pat on the head, and a reminder to keep my elbows off the table, we’d never really had much to do with one another. The more I thought about him, the more I felt that I didn’t know him at all. What would he say when I told him I wanted to be a scientist or an astronomer? “Don’t be ridiculous, Nancy. You’ll be a nurse, of course.” I imagined Mummy would smile and say, “That’s marvelous, darling. Now, wash your hands for lunch.” It didn’t matter anyway. My parents were as far away as the planets I saw through the telescope. They weren’t there to encourage or discourage me from anything. That job fell to Miss Kent and the other teachers. We turned to them now, not just for advice about what we might do when we were grown up, but also for everything else in the meantime.

  As we stepped inside to wash our hands, I said something I’d wanted to say for a long time.

  “Thank you, Miss. For keeping a special eye on me. I know it made Mummy happy.”

  Miss Kent paused for a second before she dried her hands briskly with a towel, and hung it neatly from a small hook beside the sink. She looked at me, searching for the right words, as she tucked a stray curl behind her ear.

  “Well now, run along,” she said eventually. “You don’t want to be late for tiffin.”

  * * *

  As the first weeks at Temple Hill passed, “Foxglove” (the name we’d chosen for our house at Guides) began to feel a little more like home. We swept, scrubbed, and polished every surface until they sparkled, and made patchwork curtains from old scraps of fabric Miss Butterworth had cleverly thought to bring with her. We snipped sprigs off the berry-laden bushes in the grounds and placed them in empty soup tins and old bottles we found lying around. Master Harris and Master Martin had the boys make the most wonderful lampshades from old kitchen colanders and discarded washing-machine drums, the machines themselves having been left to rust in a pile behind the houses. The light shone through the small holes, covering the ceiling with stars. It was so pretty, especially when we spun the lampshades and the light danced around the room.

  In many ways, life at the Temple Hill compound was strangely similar to life at Chefoo School. Our homes weren’t as comfortable, or the setting half as nice, but we still had to learn boring Latin and algebra, Sprout still spoke when she wasn’t supposed to, and Mouse was still the quiet one. We found fun wherever we could, worked hard, and dealt with any difficulties to the best of our ability, and on days when one of us was fed up, or feeling under the weather, we took it in turns to jolly each other along. Most of the time, the teachers kept us so busy that we didn’t have time for moping about or feeling sorry for ourselves. It was only when the seasons changed, or someone’s shoes suddenly didn’t fit, or their skirts were too short, that it struck me how long we’d been under Japanese guard; how long it had been since I’d seen my mother. I didn’t ache for her like I once had; the sharp pain of separation replaced by a sort of distant numbness.

  Edward still didn’t approve of my occasionally talking to Home Run, but even he admitted that the guards weren’t half as bad as we’d thought they might be.

  “I bet they never thought they’d end up guarding a group of schoolchildren and their teachers when they joined the army!” he said. “We’re not exactly high risk, are we!”

  We were walking around the compound square where we had roll call each morning, and where siblings now mingled on Sibling Saturday. Although we were both a year older (our eleventh and fifteenth birthdays having passed rather unceremoniously earlier that year), I still looked up to Edward, and he still tolerated having his little sister around. He also still liked to show off with bits of information he’d picked up here and there.

  “We’re actually very lucky we didn’t end up in a missionary school somewhere in Malaya, like Father was planning at one stage. I overheard Master Harris talking to Miss Kent about the conditions in the camps there.”

  “What conditions? Is it horrid?”

  “Apparently they lock people up in solitary confinement, and torture them,” he whispered.

  I didn’t understand why he felt it necessary to tell me this, and very much wished he hadn’t.

  “That’s awful, Edward. Don’t tell me any more.” I placed my hands over my ears. “How would Master Harris know anyway?”

  Edward tapped the side of his nose. “There are ways of getting information. I know it’s not exactly pleasant here, but it could be worse. That’s why I’m telling you. Even Major Kosaka isn’t that bad.”

  “He’s a brute. Always barking orders and making roll call go on forever, even when it’s freezing.”

  Edward shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’d take roll call and a bit of cold weather over torture and slave labor any day.”

  Larry caught the end of our conversation. “Thought I should come and save you, Nance. I presume Edward is crashing on about war again. Did you know, Nancy, that during the Battle of Midway, Allied troops defeated the Japanese Army?”

  “That would be the Japanese Navy, Larry,” Edward corrected. “If you’re going to poke fun at me, at least get your facts straight.”

  Larry made me smile when he mimicked Edward. He often teased my brother about being a know-it-all, but they were good friends, and Edward didn’t seem to mind.

  Later that afternoon, Sprout started to tease me about Larry. He’d helped us carry a heavy pile of laundry to the outhouse, and she wouldn’t stop talking about him as we put it through the mangle.

  “Is he your boyfriend?” she asked.

  “Of course not!” I blushed furiously. “He’s just being helpful.”

  “Funny how he only seems to be helpful when you’re around,” she said. Sprout had decided Larry Crofton liked me, and that was that, no matter how much I denied it. “You can tell he likes you. He looks at you the same way Trouble looks at Connie.” She clapped her hand over her mouth.

  “What do you mean? Sprout?” I pulled her hand away from her mouth.

  She let go of her end of the bedsheet and grabbed my hands. “Promise not to tell?” she begged. “Guide’s honor?”

  I promised. I even did the Guide salute and secret left-handed handshake to show her I really meant it.

  “He gives her chocolate and other treats. He told her he wants to be her boyfriend.”

  “But she can’t have a Japanese boyfriend. They’re our enemy.” It all sounded very dangerous. “We should tell Miss Kent.”

  “No! We mustn’t! We can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he made me promise.”

  “Who did? Trouble?”

  She nodded. “He said if I told anyone there would be . . . consequences.”

  “What sort of consequences?”

  “I don’t know. But I’d rather not find out. Forget I ever mentioned it.”

  I promised again that I wouldn’t tell anyone, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  We finished mangling the laundry in silence.

  * * *

  After Tinkerbell had been discovered by Major Kosaka, Miss Kent and Miss Butterworth had agreed that she could sleep in the loft with us. We all had great fun with the kitten, laughing as she pranced around the room chasing threads of string and bits of wool that we dangled in front of her.

  “Sprout,” I whispered as we settled down to sleep that night. “Have you seen Tinkerbell anywhere?”

  She said she hadn’t now that I mentioned it. “I’m sure Miss Butterworth has her wrapped up in a blanket in a drawer somewhere,” she said. “We’ll find her in the morning. Sleep tight.”

  I lay awake for a long time beneath my mosquito net, worrying about the kitten, but I must have eventually dozed off, because I woke in the middle of the night, disturbed by a tremendous commotion beyond the window: dogs barking, and a horrible sound like foxes fighting.

  I turned ont
o my side, stuffed my fingers in my ears, and went back to sleep.

  Chapter 17

  Elspeth

  Minnie and I awoke at the same time, disturbed by a dreadful commotion below the window. I pulled on my housecoat.

  “Where are you going?” Minnie whispered.

  “To see what’s going on. You stay with the girls.”

  “They’ll be perfectly all right for a minute or two,” she whispered. “I’m coming with you.”

  Together, we crept quietly downstairs and made our way outside, edging around the side of the house in the direction of the noise. Whatever we’d expected, neither of us was prepared for what we saw as we peered around the corner and watched as Major Kosaka tugged roughly on his dog’s lead and shouted a command in Japanese before it dropped something from its mouth.

  I grabbed Minnie’s hand as she let out a reedy gasp.

  Major Kosaka looked directly toward us, although we were hidden by the dark.

  “No pets,” he called. “You obey orders.”

  We watched in terrified silence as he pulled on the dog’s lead and they loped off together into the shadows.

  Minnie sank to her knees and wept like a child.

  “Oh, Minnie. I’m so sorry. I . . . Don’t look,” I urged. “Please don’t look.”

  “How could he?” she sobbed. “How could he hurt such an innocent little thing?”

  I gave her a moment, too distressed myself to be of any use. When her tears had subsided a little, I placed my hand on her arm and encouraged her to stand up.

  “I’ll deal with it,” I said. “You go back inside. Boil some water for tea and to . . . well. Boil a decent pan full.”

  It was one of the worst things I’d ever had to do.

  I scooped up the lifeless remains of the kitten with a garden spade, retching as I placed the ragged little body into a shallow grave beneath a plane tree. With the ground frozen, I couldn’t dig very deep, and hoped the dogs wouldn’t return for another go. I placed a sprig of winter jasmine on top of the disturbed earth, and with the boiled water from the kitchen I scrubbed the stained ground, determined to remove any trace of the incident. It would be hard enough to tell the children without them discovering any signs of the kitten’s violent demise.