by Hazel Gaynor
Mouse nudged me. “Go on,” she whispered.
I reached for the little piece of paper, but my fingers were hesitant and clumsy, and it fell to the ground. As we both bent to pick it up, Shu Lan’s hand found mine and, for what could only have been seconds but felt like much more, she held my hand and looked at me, and there was such fear and sadness in her beautiful eyes that I felt afraid and sad. And in that moment, I understood what Miss Kent meant when we’d watched Shu Lan from the principal’s office and she’d told me to think differently about the servants. Shu Lan was somebody’s daughter and somebody’s friend, just like me. She was also soon to become somebody’s mother. However dangerous it was, I wanted to help her.
I grasped the piece of paper between my fingers.
A nervous smile flickered at Shu Lan’s lips as she stood up. “Thank you, Nancy,” she whispered, and it was like a breath of wind had spoken for her.
I watched as she joined the other women, and when the gates were locked behind them, we hurried back to our accommodation.
* * *
Miss Kent studied the note on the piece of paper before folding it up again and slipping it into her pocket. She asked a lot of questions. “How did she look? Was her belly very big? Did anyone see her give the paper to you?”
We gave her as much information as we could.
“Are we in trouble, Miss?” I asked.
“No, Nancy. You’re not in trouble. You did the right thing by coming to tell me. This isn’t a place to keep secrets. It’s always better to tell someone.”
Mouse stared at Miss Kent, as if she wanted to say something, but she remained silent.
“Actually, I’m glad you came to find me, Nancy. I have something to show you.” Miss Kent bent down so that her eyes were level with mine. She wasn’t much taller than me now. Her gray eyes looked kinder close up. I could see the patterns and joins in her iris, like strands of wool knitted together. “Hold out your hands,” she said, with a smile.
I closed my eyes and waited until she placed something in my hands.
My eyes flew open. “My tea caddy! Oh, thank you, Miss! Wherever did you find it?” I hugged it tight to my chest, so relieved to have it back.
“Don’t thank me. Larry Crofton found it.”
“Larry?”
“Yes. Somehow it got mixed up with the boys’ luggage when we left the train from Tsingtao. He found it when they were having a tidy-up earlier.”
“How did he know it was mine?”
“He must have seen you carrying it from Chefoo to Temple Hill. Apparently, he was quite adamant it was yours. He said it was very special and that you’d be ever so pleased to have it back. I suggest you put it into your trunk for safekeeping.”
“Oh, I will. I’ll do it right away.”
When we saw Larry at supper, Mouse said I should go over and say thank you.
“Must I?” I said, feeling suddenly shy.
“Yes. He did something kind. And he keeps looking over.”
I wished she hadn’t noticed, and I wished Larry wouldn’t stare.
After we’d eaten the awful watery soup, I walked over to where Larry and Edward were standing with a group of friends.
Edward ruffled my hair. “Boys’ talk over here, I’m afraid!”
I scowled at him, smoothed my hair, and stared at my feet.
Larry shoved my arm. “Glad you got your tea caddy back?”
I glanced up at him from under my fringe, which had grown rather long, and was good for hiding behind. “Yes. Thanks ever so.”
“What do you keep in it, anyway?”
I shrugged. “Silly things, really.”
He grinned. “You’re a silly thing, really.”
I grinned back. “So are you.”
I was so glad to have Mummy’s letters and special things, but having them back also made me miss her more. When I reread her letters and looked through all the little treasures I’d kept, it almost felt as though another child had collected them, and that another woman had written all those words. I wondered if she’d changed as much as I had. Would I still call her Mummy when I saw her, or was that too babyish? Should I call her Mother now?
After lights out, I turned onto my side and stared at the space where Sprout should be sleeping, and I wished it was possible to keep special people in a tea caddy, to keep them safe. I listened to the whip-poor-will singing his song beyond the window, closed my eyes, and waited for morning.
Chapter 29
Elspeth
What did the note say?” Edwina asked. “Did Shu Lan ask for your help?”
“She wants me—us—to look after her baby when it’s born,” I explained. “She says she’s terrified the soldiers will take it from her.”
Edwina looked at me. “I see. And will you?”
“I was hoping you would help me find the answer to that.”
I’d gone to Edwina for advice before even telling Minnie about Shu Lan’s note. From experience, I’d learned that the fewer people who knew about camp secrets, the better, and while I trusted Minnie, I didn’t want to give her another reason to worry. We certainly had plenty of those already.
I slumped into my chair at the front of the classroom, and leaned my elbows on the desk.
“How on earth can I look after an infant here? I can barely look after myself. Quite apart from which, the guards would be suspicious. I don’t exactly look as if I’m expecting, do I? Or look Chinese, for that matter. I wish she’d asked someone else to help her.”
“But there are babies here, Elspeth. And there are Chinese mothers, too.” Edwina leaned against the edge of the desk. “I would have asked for your help, if I were her.”
“What do you mean?”
“If I were Shu Lan. If I had to think of someone to help me, to entrust my child to, I would come straight to you.” She placed her hands on her hips in a manner that reminded me of my mother when she was vexed. “You really should try to like yourself a lot more than you do. You might have made a mess of things in the past, but, from what I can see, you’re making a damn good show of things now.” She ran her fingers over her hair, sending stray silver strands drifting to the classroom floor. “You’ve done a fine job with the children, Elspeth. I do hope you realize that.”
“I’ve been their teacher, as I was appointed to be,” I replied, dismissing her compliment.
She raised a knowing eyebrow. “You’ve been far more than their teacher. Teachers instruct. You have nurtured and comforted.” She leaned forward, her hands on the desk, her eyes full of intent. “You, dear girl, have cared.”
I didn’t tell Minnie in the end. I threw the note into the stove and tried to forget about it, while partly wishing there was some other way I could help Shu Lan. Schoolgirls I could just about handle, but a baby was a different matter entirely. I was a childless spinster, without nieces or nephews. What on earth did I know about any of that?
* * *
As the weeks passed, food and medical supplies continued to dwindle, and health and morale deteriorated. Malaria, typhoid, and dysentery were as commonplace as measles and influenza had been in England. The hospital was kept at full tilt as winter temperatures fell below freezing and there wasn’t nearly sufficient fuel to heat the inadequate stoves in our rooms. With increasing frequency and heavy hearts, we heard of another death in the camp. The old and the weak were especially vulnerable to diseases that spread easily in the insanitary conditions. Death was never far away, and I dreaded the day when it would knock at our door.
I checked in on Dorothy at the hospital every day, only to be greeted with the same grim report from Nurse Eve.
“She’s very weak now,” she whispered as we stood beside her bed.
The poor child looked like a porcelain doll, so pale and still, only the threadbare hospital blanket rising and falling to signal that there was any sign of life at all.
“I’ve tried to prepare the children,” I said. “Connie and Nancy especially. I don’t offer t
he same reassurances I once did. Much as I can’t bear to think about . . . the worst, neither can I bear to give them false hope.”
Nurse Eve patted my arm lightly. “It’s only a matter of time now.”
I sat with Dorothy for hours at a time, unable to bear the thought of her being alone or afraid. I read to her from the Girl Guide Handbook, slowly reciting the Promise and Laws.
“A Guide’s honor is to be trusted. A Guide is loyal. A Guide’s duty is to be useful and to help others. A Guide is a friend to all and a sister to every other Guide. A Guide is courteous. A Guide is a friend to animals. A Guide obeys orders. A Guide smiles and sings under all difficulties. A Guide is thrifty. A Guide is pure in thought, in word, and in deed.”
The laws took on a particular poignancy, given our present situation. Everything took on a different meaning; the words of the most familiar passages heavy with importance, demanding to be really understood.
“‘It is no fun to them to walk by easy paths, the whole excitement of life is facing difficulties and dangers and apparent impossibilities, and in the end getting a chance of attaining the summit of the mountain they have wanted to reach. Well, I think it is the case with most girls nowadays. They do not want to sit down and lead an idle life, not to have everything done for them, nor to have a very easy time.’”
I let the words settle around us before I continued. With every page I turned, and every passage I read, I glanced at Dorothy, and wondered if I would ever get to the end.
* * *
I started my Weihsien diary that month; part account of camp life; part exorcism of the demons and fears that tormented me. I was nervous about documenting precise events, or my personal thoughts about our captors, aware of the punishments that might be dealt if they ever discovered it, but I added sufficient detail to form a record of camp life. Perhaps I would look back on it one day. Perhaps it was just a way for me to try to make some sense of everything that was happening to us.
“What are you writing about now, Miss Brontë?” Minnie teased.
“I’m writing about eggshells,” I replied as I hunched over the page. In an effort to use as little paper as possible, given our limited resources, my handwriting was so small it was barely legible, and my eyes were dry and tired from straining to see properly in the dim light.
“It’s funny isn’t it,” Minnie mused.
“What is?”
“When you think about what we used to consider valuable. Pots of face cream, a well-lined winter coat, freshly laundered bedsheets.” She sighed, wistfully. “I’d give up a lifetime of all that for a decent meal, and a hot bath. In fact, if we ever get out of here, I will eat my evening meals in the bath.”
It might have been an amusing idea, had it not been prefaced with “if we ever get out of here.”
“Do you remember when Edward Plummer used to go crashing on about the Navy and heroic rescue efforts?” I remarked wryly. “And you were just as bad.”
“We were rather on the optimistic side, weren’t we!”
“I wish we still were. We seem to have nothing to look forward to, Minnie. Nothing to celebrate.”
“What about your letter to Lady Baden-Powell?” she said as I picked up the stub of my pencil to continue writing. “I imagine she’ll be very keen to meet you when she hears about the Chefoo and Weihsien Brownies and Girl Guides. That’s something to look forward to. You are still writing the letter, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I add a few lines now and again. Perhaps she will be interested, if I ever get to post the damned thing.”
I planned to finish the letter with the postscript we all hoped for. I pictured myself walking to the end of Rowan Terrace, back home in York, and dropping it into the post box.
“Either way,” Minnie said, “you should keep writing it all down. If it’s good enough for our Girl Guides, it’s good enough for us.”
We’d encouraged the girls to keep logbooks as a way of documenting their achievements. Minnie had worried that creating a record of their experience here wasn’t a good idea, and that they might prefer to forget all about it after—if—we were liberated, but I’d disagreed.
“They’ll never forget, Minnie, whether they write it down or not. War and internment are part of their lives now, part of their story, part of who they are.” I put my pencil down and closed the exercise book. “I actually think life is meant to have its share of difficulty and struggle. That’s when we find out who we really are, what we’re really made of, not when everything’s going along all jolly and straightforward and terribly nice. We come alive in the dramatic bits, don’t we; in the moments that make us gasp and cry.”
Minnie was as surprised by my little monologue as I was. She stood up and threw her arms around me and we stood for an age, finding comfort and courage in the simple act of a friend’s embrace.
Sometimes we needed remarkably little to see us through another day.
Sometimes, we needed far more.
* * *
Dorothy’s deterioration weighed heavily on my mind as another Christmas approached and preparations were made to make it as special as possible for the children. All around the camp, groups of inmates pulled together to play music and sing carols, and the headmaster made a rousing speech about the true meaning of Christmas and the lasting value of the gifts of friendship and kindness. If the younger children still hoped Father Christmas would find them, and leave a stocking stuffed with toys at the end of their mats, they never said. War had taken the magic and innocence of childhood from them far too soon.
But a gift of my own arrived with the return of Charlie.
Minnie first alerted me. “He’s back, Els. He came back!”
I didn’t need to ask who she meant.
He was shockingly thin, and his face was dreadfully hollow, but he managed to smile as he told us how he’d been kept in solitary confinement for around two weeks—he couldn’t be sure—and had then been taken to see the commandant.
“They interrogated me for days,” he said. “They were planning to send me away, to a camp near Peking, from what I could gather.”
“Why didn’t they?” I asked.
“As luck would have it, I noticed the commandant’s radio equipment was broken. I offered to fix it for him—and did a bloody good job of it, too. He decided I would be more use to him here, so . . . I’m staying. Albeit under very close watch. I used the situation to my advantage, of course.”
He explained that while he was fixing the radio, he’d taken the opportunity to switch to the shortwave transmission bands, and had picked up the BBC Overseas Service.
“I couldn’t listen for long,” he explained. “But I did hear some encouraging news of Allied progress in the Pacific. US bombers have caused significant damage on the Japanese-occupied island of Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands. There have also been air attacks on a Japanese base in Rabaul.” It was the first time in months that we’d heard any news at all from the outside world, and we all listened intently to Charlie’s account. “Hopefully, my ‘repairs’ were temporary enough that I’ll be asked to look at it again.”
I couldn’t hide my delight, or my relief, to have Charlie back with us, although it was difficult to come to terms with the fact that he had clearly suffered.
“How have you been, Elspeth?” he asked when everyone else had dispersed and we had a moment alone while I tidied some books in the classroom. “You look tired.”
I smiled. “And there I was all morning, creating perfect waves with my irons. I thought I’d never looked better, and it turns out I look like I’ve been dragged through a hedge backward. Really, I don’t know why I bother.”
He returned my smile. “You look perfectly lovely to me.”
I folded my arms across my cardigan and told him to stop being so silly.
“You do,” he insisted. “Tired, but lovely.”
“I’ve been dreadfully worried about you,” I admitted. “It’s good to have you back.”
“It’s good
to be back,” he said, and we smiled at each other without hesitation, or embarrassment, because it was a ridiculous thing to say, even if it was true.
As I made to return to my accommodation, Nurse Eve pushed open the classroom door.
“I’m sorry to interrupt.” Her face was heavy with concern. “Could you come, Elspeth.”
I stared at her, and then at Charlie as I swallowed a knot of dread. “Is it . . . ?”
She nodded. “It’s Dorothy.”
Chapter 30
Nancy
I was dreaming about my first winter in China, and a perfect December morning at the China Inland Mission HQ in Shanghai. “It’s snowing, Nonny!” Mummy whispered as she gently woke me. “Come and see.” I could still feel the warmth of her arms around me as we stood together at the window; could still see the bright dazzle of the sun that scattered diamonds on the snow and turned the branches of the gingko trees to gold. It was all so vivid that, for a wonderful moment, I thought it was Mummy’s hand on my shoulder, gently shaking me awake.
“Nancy, wake up.” But it was Connie’s face I saw when I opened my eyes. “Miss Kent says you’re to come to the hospital,” she whispered. “To see Dorothy.”
By the light of her hand lamp I could see that her eyes were red and swollen.
Half-asleep and bleary-eyed, I followed Connie from the accommodation block and trudged along beside her in my nightie toward the hospital. I knew something was horribly wrong because she was ever so quiet and held my hand tight in hers.
Miss Kent was waiting for us outside. “Hello, Nancy. I’m sorry to wake you.”
“That’s all right, Miss.”
“I need you to be especially brave, Nancy,” she said as we walked along the corridors toward Sprout’s room. “Dorothy is feeling very poorly tonight, but she asked to see you.” She smiled one of her encouraging smiles as she opened the door, and we stepped quietly inside.
Sprout was in bed, but she was awake. Connie sat down in a chair beside her while I perched on the edge of an empty bed beside Sprout’s. The room was dark, but moonlight peered through the bars at the windows so that I could see Sprout quite clearly.