The Bird in the Bamboo Cage

by Hazel Gaynor

  Charlie took a deep breath. ‘To so-called Civilian Assembly Centres. Otherwise known as internment camps.’

  I loosened the top button at my collar as all the air seemed to be sucked out of the small staff room. We’d heard about Jews being rounded up in Europe and taken to Nazi-run work camps in Poland and Germany. Some reports suggested that children were separated from their parents, and husbands from their wives. I couldn’t believe we might find ourselves in a similar situation.

  ‘Where are these … camps?’ I asked.

  ‘Most appear to be in various locations around Shanghai. There are also several large camps in Hong Kong.’ He paused. ‘And there’s one other. In northern China. In Weihsien.’

  I repeated the name. ‘Wey-shen.’ It was familiar to me, but I couldn’t remember why.

  ‘I don’t wish to alarm anyone, but it would certainly be possible for us to be moved there in a few days by boat and train,’ Charlie added. ‘I think we should be prepared.’

  ‘Surely they wouldn’t uproot the entire school,’ I remarked. ‘There are over a hundred children here! It would be a logistical nightmare.’ The awful thought also occurred to me that if we were moved, how would we ever let the children’s parents know where we were?

  ‘Quite apart from which we’re British citizens,’ Minnie added quietly. ‘Teachers. In a missionary school! They wouldn’t put us into some dreadful camp.’ She looked around the room, her eyes wide. ‘Would they?’

  The answer lay in the silence that settled over us like ash from a dying fire.

  I went to bed early that evening, eager to be alone with my thoughts. I sat for a while, reading over my mother’s letter, wondering where on earth Alfie was. Part of me hoped his patrol had been captured and that he’d been taken to a POW camp. Better that than the far worse alternative.

  After turning out the light, I lay awake and listened to the haunting hoot of an owl beyond the window, searching for his mate in the dark. I followed his call, letting my memories stray through the night, to happier times when I’d placed my cheek against Harry’s chest as we’d danced. I’d told him I could hear his heart beating.

  ‘What’s it saying?’ he’d asked.

  I pressed my ear to his shirt and listened to the rhythmic beat. ‘I think it’s saying you love me.’

  I felt his smile before he dipped his lips and whispered in my ear, ‘I think it’s asking you to marry me.’

  The following day, our small army of cooks, cleaners, amahs, gardeners, groundsmen and boatmen were rounded up in the Boys’ School courtyard. The snow had been cleared by the soldiers and piled up in great drifts beside the school buildings. Commander Hayashi and the more senior guards shouted orders at the servants, using their bamboo sticks to push and prod anyone who didn’t move quickly enough. I noticed that the soldier who’d struck Minnie and called himself Trouble was always the first to use physical force.

  ‘Why must they always be so rough,’ Minnie asked. ‘Is it really necessary?’

  She stood beside me as we huddled together for warmth. Her eye was finally starting to heal, but I knew she felt every one of those rough prods as if the stick were prodding her.

  ‘It gives them a sense of power,’ I said. ‘They’re nothing better than a group of school bullies. I’d like to give them a piece of my mind.’

  ‘Well, I hope you won’t,’ she replied, giving me one of her looks. ‘We both know what happens when one talks back to them.’

  I sighed, and patted her hand. ‘Of course I won’t. But, still. I’d very much like to.’

  I was surprised by how upset I was by the servants’ departure. They were part of the fabric of the school; as much a part of our days as assembly and prayers, tiffin and supper. Theirs were the familiar faces we passed in the corridors, the voices we heard speaking in the local tongue, the only regular contact we had with a people whose country we had made our home. We’d quietly shared their celebrations and grief, triumphs and despair, albeit from a distance, and I suspected I wasn’t the only member of staff to have formed something of a personal connection with one or another of them.

  As Wei Huan moved forward to join the line, he paused beside me.

  ‘I miss Chefoo School very much,’ he said. ‘I miss the children.’

  ‘And they will miss you,’ I replied. I reached for his hands, pressing my unspoken shame and apology into the landscape of hard work I felt in his rough skin. ‘We will all miss you,’ I added. ‘The school will not be the same without you.’ I hoped he knew how much I meant it.

  ‘Where will you go, Wei Huan?’ Minnie asked.

  ‘To my family, here in Chefoo. In the spring, we travel to my uncle’s farm, near Weihsien. We have good prospects there.’

  My mouth felt as if it was stuffed with sawdust as I recalled Charlie Harris mentioning the internment camp at Weihsien. I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  ‘I have gift for you.’ Wei Huan pressed a small square of folded cotton into my hands.

  Surprised by the gesture, I folded back the neat corners of the little parcel. ‘Nine sunflower seeds!’ I smiled. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘In Chinese culture, nine means everlasting. Eternity. We grow anywhere,’ he said, ‘with strong roots.’

  I pressed a hand to my heart. ‘You are a good man, Wei Huan. I will take care of them.’

  He offered a hesitant smile, made a small bow and walked on to join the group already assembled in the courtyard.

  ‘You! What did he give you?’

  The loud voice made me jump. I turned to see Trouble stalking toward me, his face cold and emotionless until he recognized me.

  His thin lips curved into a knowing smirk as he slowly pronounced my name. ‘Elspeth Kent.’ He carried a menacing air of arrogance and authority. ‘What did he give you?’ he repeated.

  I placed my hands behind my back. ‘Nothing. Just some flower seeds.’ Those small grey seeds suddenly felt like the most important thing in the world.

  ‘Show.’ He tapped my arm firmly with his stick, his sentences becoming clipped as his anger increased.

  Heart pounding, I unfolded the cotton parcel and held out my hands to show him the seeds. ‘Sunflowers. For the garden. Not opium.’

  He flicked his fingertip roughly over the seeds, sending one tumbling to the ground beside the wall. I bent down to pick it up but his boot found it first, deliberately grinding it into the frozen earth with his heel before tossing his spent cigarette on top of it. As a final insult, he spat on the place where the seed had fallen. He tipped my chin toward him with the end of his stick, laughed, and returned to the group of servants.

  ‘What an absolute brute,’ Minnie whispered.

  I took a moment to compose myself before I stood up. ‘That seed is all of us, Minnie. He just showed us how insignificant we are; how easily he might stamp any one of us into the ground with the heel of his boot. “Brute” is too generous a name for him.’

  Minnie let out a sigh. ‘I will pray for him tonight. For all of them.’

  A ball of anger and frustration burst inside me.

  ‘He doesn’t deserve your prayers, Minnie!’ I snapped. ‘None of them do. Besides, all the prayers in the world won’t make them leave. Prayers won’t bring an end to the war, or to this damned invasion. Prayers can’t bring back our loved ones, can they?’

  I hadn’t meant to speak so honestly, or to raise my voice, especially not to Minnie, but all the emotions I’d kept carefully hidden these past weeks – years, even – rushed out like air from a punctured lung, and left me breathless.

  Minnie stared at me, shocked by my outburst, but before she could say anything the servants began to walk through the school gates, one line for the men, one line for the women. I swallowed a knot of emotion and pushed the handkerchief with its seeds into my pocket, wrapping my hand around them as if they were the most precious of jewels.

  A spectacular winter sunset lit up the sky as the servants departed, tinting everything a fiery r
ed. In different circumstances, I would have admired it, but I couldn’t find any joy in it today. It made me think of Harry. I could picture him so clearly, standing in front of his easel, adding layers of colour to get it just right. Painting was his escape from the colourless world he entered every day, his brushes and paints allowing him to restore colour and beauty to his world after a day spent underground in the pitch dark of the colliery mine. ‘I’ll paint you every day, when we’re married,’ he’d joked. ‘I’ll paint you first thing in the morning, and late at night. My very own sunrise and sunset.’ I imagined his fingers like brushes against my skin until I realized it was Minnie, looping her arm through mine.

  ‘Let’s get inside,’ she said. ‘I’m freezing.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Minnie. I …’

  She shushed me before I had a chance to apologize for my outburst. ‘No need to say anything. I think we could both do with a cup of strong sweet tea, don’t you?’

  But I couldn’t stop thinking about how cruelly Trouble had trampled the sunflower seed into the ground, and there wasn’t a cup of tea strong or sweet enough to ease my concerns.

  The gaps left behind by the servants’ quiet efficiency clung to the school as keenly as the frosts that decorated the windows.

  ‘Who’ll do all the servants’ work now, Miss?’ Joan asked quietly, as she took the pile of Christmas carol books from my desk to hand out to the others. ‘They did such a lot for us, didn’t they?’

  The way she launched into the question made it clear the girls had been discussing it among themselves. No matter how much we tried to protect the children from the worst of our situation, or how much we tried to brighten things up with optimism and stoicism, the truth was never far away.

  ‘That’s a very good question, Joan,’ I replied. ‘And the answer is that we will do the work ourselves, of course. We’ll roll up our sleeves and get on with it. And we’ll make a jolly good go of it too, I’d say. In fact, Tawny Owl and I have already agreed that you can all count the additional tasks towards your House Orderly badges.’

  The girls were always keen to earn another badge and as Joan returned to her seat she whispered it to Nancy, who whispered it to Winnie, and so on and so on, until the news reached Dorothy, who wanted to know why everyone was talking about badgers, which made them all giggle. It was the first time I’d heard the girls laugh since the soldiers arrived. For once, I didn’t stop them.

  I fetched Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth from my desk drawer, hesitating for just a moment before I removed the Japanese notice that had been placed on the cover. I felt a small thrill of rebellion as I sat down and opened the book. The girls were soon intrigued by the story of Wang Lung, and his wife, O-Lan, a former slave, and their struggle to survive amid poverty, famine and war. I hoped the book would stir an interest in Chinese culture in the minds of these privileged western children who, fortunately for them, had never known a life of poverty and servitude.

  While our experience of life under Japanese guard was still very new and none of us knew what worrying development the next day might bring, one small relief was that the guards seemed rather disinterested in us. The violent attack on Minnie had left us in no doubt that their presence brought plenty of danger, but – on the whole – they seemed content to let us carry on as normal, or as normal as things could possibly be.

  As temperatures dropped further, concerns for the servants who’d left the school heightened. Long before the events of Pearl Harbor, Shu Lan had told me that local farmers were suffering terribly under Japanese occupation. Rice and wheat harvests were taken by the soldiers for a fraction of the price they would normally sell for, and any fish and meat also had to be given up. Those who had pigs had slaughtered them, salted the meat, and hidden it in cellars beneath the courtyards of their homes.

  ‘Could we somehow send food parcels out to them?’ I suggested to Minnie when I discussed my concerns with her. ‘I’m sure we can spare enough to help.’

  She thought it was a good idea. ‘But how? One enemy helping another. The guards would never allow it.’

  ‘Unless there’s a way to secretly send food parcels over the wall,’ I suggested. ‘Avoid the guards completely?’

  ‘Goodness, Els. That sounds awfully daring and dangerous.’

  It did, but if it worked, it would be worth the risk. ‘I’ll talk to Charlie about it at the staff meeting,’ I added as I smoothed the edge of her eiderdown and wished her goodnight. ‘He seems to be rather good at things like that.’

  ‘Things like what?’ Minnie asked.

  ‘Espionage!’ I whispered as I closed the door behind me.

  My bedroom was especially cold that night, my breath as visible as the guards’ cigarette smoke that trailed behind them as they patrolled the corridors. It was the coldest December I’d experienced since arriving at Chefoo. The clear seasonal change was one of the things I’d come to enjoy most about China, the marked progression from the fragrant calm of spring to the warm rains of summer, the cool crisp mornings of autumn to the piercing chills of the winter snows. As the warmth of the day’s weak sunlight leached away after dark, I thought about the damp grey summers in Yorkshire and promised myself I would never complain about them again, when – if – I ever got back.

  Once I’d washed and dressed for bed, I pulled my steamer trunk out from beneath the iron bedstead. My fingers were cold and I fumbled as I unbuckled the latches. Inside were the starched skirts and blouses and neatly darned stockings I’d already packed in anticipation of my return to England. I blew out a breath and lifted them up, shaking out the creases and hope I’d packed among them, just as I had on my first evening here. Next, I took out the books I’d brought with me: The Pilgrim’s Progress, my Girl Guide Handbook, Little Women, a battered copy of Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth and Isabella Bird’s The Yangtze Valley and Beyond. Books before comfort had seemed like a wise packing principle at the time, but I sorely regretted leaving my favourite woollen blanket behind. I’d imagined and hoped for so many things as the Blue Funnel Line steamship had carried me east from Liverpool to Shanghai – a new life, a new purpose, the excitement of getting to know a new culture and country. If England had felt distant after three weeks at sea with a cargo of Lancashire cotton, it felt impossibly far away now. I thought of everyone I’d left behind there: my mother and Alfie, Auntie Gert, Phyllis at the post office, poor jilted Reggie, Harry.

  I unfolded my map of China next. It was still as creased as just-washed linen, having been well-studied in the weeks leading up to my departure from England, and scrutinized several times a day during the long journey at sea. With my fingertip, I retraced my journey from Shanghai, around the tip of the Shantung Peninsula (Dragon’s Beak as I now knew it was known to the locals), past Haiyang and Weihaiwei to the picturesque port of Chefoo, perched on the southern edge of the Gulf of Chihli on the north-eastern coast of the Yellow Sea, over five hundred miles from Shanghai. I thought about the final thirty minutes of bone-shaking transfer by rickshaw with Amelia Prescott, the formidable Prep School principal, and how she’d sat beside me, chatting effusively on about the proud legacy of the Chefusians and advising on the daily windmilling of one’s arms to prevent unsightly sagging. It all seemed so strange and distant, as if it had happened to a different person entirely.

  I folded the map back up, pushed the trunk beneath the bed and walked to the window where I stretched the challenges of the day from my tired limbs. My gaze settled on the curve of the bay just visible in the distance, the water silvered by a generous yule moon. The ocean had always given me great comfort. To know that the waters that had carried me here could take me back to England anytime I wanted had offered a reassurance I hadn’t expected to need. Only now it felt as if the ocean was the thing holding me in place, rather than the thing that might set me free. I froze, mid-stretch, as a line of guards marched beneath my window, the rhythmic goose-step of their boots matched by the heavy thump of my heart. I stepped back and pulled the shutter
s closed with a snap.

  Kneeling beside the bed, I said a prayer for Alfie, willing him to be alive wherever in the world he was, praying for him to find the strength to endure whatever circumstances he now faced. I finished with a prayer for all the brave boys fighting the Nazis in Europe, and for my mother, and for Minnie and the girls, and for Shu Lan and Wei Huan, and finally – as always – I prayed for Harry. Whether my words were founded in habit, or came from a place of genuine faith, I wasn’t sure.

  Before I climbed into bed, I opened my Girl Guide Handbook. I took out the envelope, pulled the single page from inside and read over my words. It is with much difficulty, and after a great deal of personal anguish and reflection, that I must inform you of my intention to leave my position at Chefoo School and return to my family in England …

  I’d written the letter so full of determination, pleased to be taking control of my future rather than letting others twist and bend it like one of Shu Lan’s paper flowers, but I’d let it linger for too long. The time I thought I’d had in which to make difficult decisions had been washed away with the last of the autumn tides. Now, the things I hadn’t said would remain unspoken. The words I’d so carefully written would remain unread.

  Without hesitation, I tore the letter into tiny fragments, pushed open the window and scattered the pieces, like snowflakes, into the darkness. I watched them drift away on the wind. I was staying now, for better or worse.

  Unable to sleep, I opened the book of Buddhist scriptures Shu Lan had given me and read a passage she’d marked and translated into English. One line, in particular, stood out: The price of freedom is simply choosing to be; liberation is in the mind. I held tight to the words, gripped my hockey stick beneath the bedcovers, and waited for the sun to rise. While nothing much was certain anymore, that, at least, I could depend on.

  NANCY

  Despite our teachers’ best efforts to carry on as normal with school routine, there was nothing normal about seeing soldiers everywhere. They seemed to multiply overnight and take over another part of the school every day. They mostly kept their distance, but I was wary of them and their snarling dogs. Edward warned me about the one who called himself Trouble; the one who’d hit Poor Miss Butterworth. ‘I don’t like the look of him, Nonny,’ he said. ‘Make sure you’re on your best behaviour whenever he’s around.’