by Hazel Gaynor
Uncle Eric really did put in the hours. Whether chopping wood or cooking, sweeping up leaves, or giving a classroom full of spellbound children a lesson in science, he was a relentless workhorse.
‘Where on earth do you find the energy?’ I’d asked him recently when we’d crossed paths in the school building. He was making a model of the solar system from things he’d found around camp: discarded tins and punctured tennis balls and rusting wire he’d found beside the guards’ house.
‘I get my energy from being busy, Elspeth. I don’t know about you, but I find the idler I am, the worse it all is. If I keep going, keep working, I don’t have time to think too much.’ He tapped his bald head with his finger. ‘Thinking is the real war, isn’t it? It’s our minds that will ultimately determine whether we win or lose; whether we survive.’
I’d thought about those words many times since.
The crowd cheered and whooped as the racers reappeared in the distance.
I stood up to get a better look. ‘Oh, look, Charlie. Edward Plummer’s in the lead.’
‘Gosh. So he is.’ He laughed as he stood up beside me. ‘Perhaps all those lessons of mine have paid off after all.’
Edward crossed the finish line first and raised his arms in victory. Uncle Eric, only just beaten, shook his hand, and all the Chefoo children watching rushed around to offer their congratulations. It was a rare moment of celebration; a moment of unity and joy.
‘It might not be so bad if we could be sure of a month of days like this,’ Charlie remarked. ‘Funny isn’t it, how little you need when you have nothing.’
‘We won’t know what to do with ourselves when we’re back home,’ I said. ‘Three full meals a day and all the soap you can lay your hands on. Imagine!’
‘Where is home, exactly? I don’t think I’ve ever asked.’
‘Yorkshire. A little village outside York.’
Charlie studied me as he shielded his eyes from the glare of the sun. ‘I’ve never been to Yorkshire. They say it’s very pretty.’
I adjusted my sunhat and pushed my hands into my skirt pockets. ‘Then you must visit.’
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Yes, I must.’
NANCY
March 1944
‘Books are a feast for the imagination,’ Mrs Trevellyan announced as she wafted around her room like a will-o’-the-wisp. ‘Who cares if there’s barbed wire around the walls. This is our escape. Right here, in all these glorious words. Between these pages, we can be as free as the birds. We can go anywhere we please!’
I wasn’t sure what Churchill would have to say about that, but I understood what she meant. Books took us far away from Weihsien. We ate them up as ravenously as if they were beef stew and dumplings, and jam roly-poly and custard.
Mouse and I enjoyed helping Mrs Trevellyan with the camp library. As one of the first arrivals into the camp, she’d had the idea of pooling all the books anyone had brought with them, so that everyone could share. We’d help to arrange the books into alphabetical order by title (because nobody could ever remember the name of the author), and made weekly trips around the compound to collect books from people who’d forgotten they’d ever borrowed one, or were too poorly to return them, or wanted to keep the book for themselves. Plenty of people denied ever taking a book in the first place, but Mrs Trevellyan was meticulous about keeping a list of borrowers, so we knew they were being what she called ‘Economical with the Truth’.
From Shakespeare’s Sonnets to the Reader’s Digest and a much-loved edition of The Hound of the Baskervilles, people held onto their favourites as if they were loaves of freshly baked bread. I couldn’t blame them. Books really were our escape from Weihsien. Between the pages we walked beside blue oceans, solved murders in English country houses, ate sticky buns beside crackling log fires, and travelled the world from Paris to Nepal, Africa to New York.
The best part of helping was that we always got first pick of the books as they were returned. Mrs Trevellyan said we were only allowed to borrow one book at a time because there weren’t nearly enough to go around, but we found ways to make one book last an age, savouring each delicious chapter, and often reading it twice, just to make sure. Mouse read books from back to front, and then by reading every odd-numbered chapter and then every even-numbered chapter. Best of all, I forgot to miss my mother while I was reading. In the middle of a really good story, I forgot I was in China, in the middle of a war, at all.
Sometimes, we found scraps of paper in the books, or little tokens people had used as bookmarks and forgotten to take out. Mouse found a tiny strip of folded paper tucked inside the sleeve of a book called The Thirty-Nine Steps. The paper had Chinese writing on it, and a picture of a lotus flower. She put it in her pocket.
‘What are you keeping that for?’ I asked. ‘You’re getting as bad as me for collecting things. You don’t even know what it says!’
‘It’s pretty,’ she said. ‘And I want to learn Chinese when I’m older. I’ll use it as a bookmark until I can understand what it says.’
We sometimes found corners of the pages turned down, and passages marked and underlined. Mrs Trevellyan didn’t seem to mind, although I thought it spoiled the books.
‘I’d never write in a book,’ I said. ‘It makes them look messy.’
‘It does if you look at it one way,’ she clucked as she put some books back onto the shelves we couldn’t reach. ‘But it also makes them look loved. It means that someone stopped and thought about that sentence, or that paragraph. Books aren’t museum pieces to be admired from a distance. They’re meant to be lived in; messed up a little.’
When our work was done, she made tea. As we’d both come to expect, it wasn’t any normal tea.
‘Hibiscus,’ she announced. ‘Made from flowers I found at the far end of the compound. There’s an entire garden down there. Somebody’s obviously looking after them. Perhaps some of the soldiers have a heart, after all.’
Mouse was fascinated by the different types of tea Mrs Trevellyan made, and she mostly liked the flavours. I would have much preferred to have an ordinary cup of Lyons, but I drank the hibiscus tea anyway to be polite, after which I excused myself and left them chatting about the dangers of rhododendron, and pink oleander, and the medicinal properties of ginseng and ginger.
I could never get used to Weihsien being my home, no matter how long our internment went on. Every day, I looked at the armed guards at the watchtowers, the locked gates and barbed wire, the ditches dug beside the walls to prevent escape, and it felt as if we’d only just arrived, and everything was unfamiliar and strange.
It wasn’t terrible every day, but it was often difficult, and it was always fraught with danger. I felt it in the air, as clearly as I felt the autumn mists and the coming of the winter snows and summer rains, and although we had each other, and our teachers, and Kingfisher Patrol, I felt horribly alone, and envied the children whose mothers were with them.
‘Do you wish you could swap places with her?’ Mouse asked as we watched a little girl play skipping with a frayed piece of rope while her mother looked on and clapped her encouragement.
‘I’d just like to see my mother,’ I said. ‘Even if it was only for a little while, and then she had to leave again.’
‘What would you say to her? If you could see her?’
I thought for a moment. ‘I don’t think I’d say anything. I’d be happy just to feel her arms around me.’ I took my shoe off and tipped out a stone that had been bothering me. It was nice to wiggle my toes in my socks. My shoes were too small for me now and nipped at my heels. ‘I’m sorry for always going on like an awful bore, Mouse. I know it’s much worse for you.’
‘But it isn’t. Not really,’ she said. ‘I don’t remember my mother. You have memories and feelings to miss. I just have a blank space.’
‘I don’t think you have a blank space at all,’ I said. ‘I think your mother is with you all the time, encouraging you, just the same as that mother over there.
’
‘Do you really think so?’ She smiled, pleased by the thought.
‘I do. Yes.’
Without our parents, we looked after each other, and squabbled with each other, and shared secrets and stuck together. In a funny way, my Chefoo family was more like a family than my own had ever been. My parents had become wispy memories, so that I almost felt shy when I thought about them. Who were Lillian and Anthony Plummer? What made them laugh, and cry? What were they afraid of? Sometimes I felt as if I didn’t know my parents at all.
Almost worse than being constantly hungry was having to go to the latrines. Several of the Chefoo children and teachers had caught dysentery, and the cesspools and latrines were almost unbearable as the infection spread through the camp.
‘Block your nose, and go in backwards,’ Miss Kent advised when we complained about how awful it was. ‘And be thankful you’re not the ones who have to empty them,’ she added.
Even in a place like Weihsien, where everything was awful, there were still people worse off than us. We felt especially sorry for the local women who came in to the compound to take away the waste from the latrines.
‘If we really felt sorry for them, we would do it for them,’ Mouse said as we stood a short distance away and watched. ‘It’s no good pitying someone and not doing anything about it. Come on.’
She grabbed my hand and dragged me over to the group of women.
‘Mouse, I really don’t think we should,’ I cautioned, looking over my shoulder toward the guards. ‘We’ll get into terrible trouble.’
‘Then let’s get into trouble,’ she said in a rare moment of defiance and determination. ‘What would Sprout do if she was here?’
‘She’d get into trouble,’ I replied. I missed her so much. Her sense of fun and adventure; her wild unpredictability. I missed the confidence I felt when I was with her.
‘Exactly,’ Mouse said. ‘So let’s get into trouble for her!’
I imagined Sprout giggling beside me as I followed Mouse’s lead.
‘We’ve come to help,’ Mouse said as we reached the women. She picked up one end of a pole, and indicated that I should take the other end. The stench from the buckets swaying beneath was so overpowering that I retched and had to breathe through my mouth as we walked toward the gate.
We were nearly there when Home Run rushed over to us.
‘Put it down!’ he urged. ‘You must not do their work.’
‘We’re earning points for our Guide badges,’ Mouse said. ‘We only want to help.’
‘Let us just go as far as the gate,’ I pleaded. ‘That’s all.’
He looked over his shoulder and nodded his consent. ‘Hurry. Before Commandant sees you.’
We reached the compound gate and took the heavy pole from our shoulders. The two women who were supposed to carry the buckets had caught up.
‘We must all help,’ Mouse said. ‘We wanted to help you.’
They looked at each other and then the younger of the two leaned toward us.
‘You are kind,’ she whispered. ‘Very kind.’
It was the closest we’d been to the gates since we’d arrived. I stared up at the Chinese writing along the top of the gates which I now knew said ‘Courtyard of the Happy Way’. I took a step forward and pressed my hand against the solid wood.
‘It’s just through there, Mouse,’ I whispered. ‘Freedom. The world. The rest of our lives. It’s so close.’
I peered through the wood to see if I could catch a glimpse of the other side, but the camp Commandant had been alerted to us and stalked over.
‘You! Go back!’ he barked, waving his stick at me. ‘Children not allowed here.’
‘Go,’ Home Run whispered. ‘Quickly.’
I grabbed Mouse’s hand and we ran, as fast as we could, away from the Commandant and his great bamboo stick. As we ran away from the gates that led towards freedom, the wind whipped around our legs and ruffled our hair, and I caught the scent of English lavender on the breeze and I was sure I could hear my mother, calling out to me, ‘Run, Nancy! Run!’ For the first time since we’d been under Japanese guard, I understood that freedom wasn’t something I had to wait for, but was something I could choose. In my mind, in my imagination and my memories, I could be as free as the birds that raced the wind; as free as the clouds that chased the sun far above me.
ELSPETH
Our remarkable Girl Guides passed their Weihsien Star tests that month. Minnie insisted we have a celebration to acknowledge their hard work, and although our enthusiasm for celebrations was rather lacking, her relentless enthusiasm was infectious.
The guards were surprisingly tolerant of entertainment in camp. From the raucous rehearsals and performances of the resident amateur dramatic group, to the beautiful harmonies of the Weihsien choir (an unlikely group of camp inmates who’d found companionship in their shared love of choral singing), a defiant spark of creativity seemed to always linger in the air. From Shakespeare to Chekhov, to operatic arias, and the innocence of our girls’ own voices, it was wonderful to hear. Music held such beauty and hope, and had a wonderful ability to connect us all, whatever our language. Even the guards stopped to listen whenever music played. It was as if we’d all taken in a collective deep breath, and let out our differences in a long sigh.
As more bewildered souls had arrived, Weihsien had grown to the size of a small town and, like any town, it had its share of reprobates and hooligans, courtesans and prostitutes, as well as those whose lives had run a gentler course. It was a dizzying concoction, but one that somehow worked. The sheer variety of people interned at the compound never failed to astound me, so I wasn’t surprised to discover that a dozen members of the Salvation Army had been brought to Weihsien in one of the first waves of civilian internment. They were part of a band, and had brought their instruments into camp with them. Charlie told me they were secretly rehearsing the British and American national anthems, to play in the event of liberation.
‘They rehearse silently,’ he explained, ‘because although the guards tolerate a bit of classical music or show tunes, they won’t permit the playing of patriotic national anthems.’
‘How are they rehearsing then?’ I asked.
‘They’re learning the pieces on pretend instruments: an old tennis racket for a guitar, a broken shovel is a violin, a rusting piece of metal is a flute. It’s quite something to see. They follow the sheet music and stay perfectly in time.’
‘Do you even think about liberation anymore, Charlie?’ I asked as we made bunting from leaves and spring blossom the children had gathered from around the compound. ‘I used to think about it all the time. How it would happen. Who would come to our rescue. What I would do in my first moments on the outside.’ I threaded a rusting piece of wire through the stalk of a leaf. ‘I don’t do that anymore.’
Charlie studied me from beneath his sandy fringe, which was in need of a good trim. ‘You should think about liberation,’ he said. ‘You must. Otherwise it means you’ve given up.’
‘Maybe I have.’
He put down his leaf, and took my hands in his as he gently pulled me to my feet. We stood, face to face, his eyes smiling at the corners.
‘Elspeth Kent give up? Never! How about tea at The Ritz when we get back to England?’
I turned my face to hide my blushes, and my smile. ‘Don’t be silly.’
‘I’m serious. I’d like to take you for tea at The Ritz. Maybe a little dancing to end the night? That’s got to be worth looking forward to, hasn’t it?’
‘I have two left feet, and absolutely nothing to wear,’ I protested.
‘And I have two right feet, so we’ll make a perfect pair. And who cares what anyone wears. We’ve seen the absolute worst of each other. We’ve worn newspaper vests for goodness sake.’
I smiled. ‘I suppose we have seen rather the worst bits!’
The familiar strains of ‘The Blue Danube’ drifted toward us from the school building, where the Salvation A
rmy band were rehearsing for our celebration.
‘Aha! A waltz. An der schönen blauen Donau,’ Charlie said with a smile. ‘Shall we?’
He placed his hands at my waist and shoulder, leading with confidence. Although my instinct was to protest and tell him to stop being silly, for once, I didn’t. I closed my eyes and listened to the familiar rise and fall of the music as we moved in time to the beat, and it was thrilling, and beautiful, and desperately sad all at the same time.
‘I can’t remember the last time I danced,’ I whispered.
‘Me neither,’ Charlie replied as we bumped into each other and apologized and then laughed nervously as the music came to a stop. ‘I don’t think we’ll forget this dance in a hurry.’
We returned to our bunting, but something had changed, and a distant neglected part of me, the part of me that was once full of hope for the future, flickered tentatively back to life.
With the Salvation Army band accompanying the girls’ singing, we drew quite a crowd for our celebration. Even some of the guards who came to watch gave an enthusiastic round of applause at the end.
Mrs Trevellyan rushed over to me as I was packing away the chairs.
‘Well, that was marvellous,’ she gushed, as she pressed her hands into mine. ‘Thank you so very much.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘For what you’ve brought to the compound,’ she said. ‘When those lorries rumbled through the gates and you all stepped out, I knew we would be all right.’
‘Why?’ I asked, a little taken aback by her unexpected show of emotion.
‘Because you brought hope, dear. Over a hundred children! And as neatly turned out as I ever saw. You brought a glimpse of a future we’d all but given up on. You should be very proud of what you’re doing with those girls. No mother could be prouder.’
I didn’t quite know what to say. I thanked her, and as I made my way back to the accommodation block, I gave myself permission to feel a little proud. Just for a moment or two.