The Bird in the Bamboo Cage

by Hazel Gaynor

  I offered to cut Charlie’s hair that afternoon. My hands trembled as I combed and cut. I hadn’t touched a man’s hair for over seven years and had forgotten how close one must get; how intimate an experience it was. The rather lopsided end result was a testament to my nerves, but he was gracious enough to thank me all the same.

  ‘You have improved me, Miss Kent.’ He smiled as he studied his reflection in the bottom of an empty tin of powdered milk that he used as a mirror. ‘Indeed, I believe I have never looked better.’

  I scolded him for being flippant. ‘It’s terrible. I blame the scissors. They’re awfully blunt.’

  He laughed. ‘You’re right. It is absolutely terrible, but you, dear Elspeth, are a tonic.’

  With ‘The Blue Danube’ waltz, and the girls’ proud faces and Edwina’s kind words in my mind, it was with a rare sense of peace that I fell asleep that night, but I couldn’t have been asleep for long before I was disturbed by a persistent tapping at the window.

  I pulled my nightdress around myself, opened the door, and peered out into the darkness.

  ‘Who’s there?’ I whispered, part dreading, part hoping it might be Charlie Harris.

  My heart stuck in my throat as Wei Huan appeared around the side of the building, a bundle of rags in his arms.

  ‘Miss Elspeth! Oh, Miss Elspeth.’

  ‘Wei Huan! My goodness. Look at you.’ He was so desperately thin I couldn’t suppress my shock. ‘Whatever are you doing here?’ I whispered. ‘It’s far too dangerous. You’ll be in terrible trouble.’

  Disturbed by the commotion, Minnie had also woken and joined me at the door. ‘Elspeth? What on earth’s going on? Oh! Wei Huan …’

  The poor man’s distress was evident. ‘Take her,’ he pleaded as he pushed the bundle of rags into Minnie’s arms before he fell to his knees. ‘Please. Keep her safe.’

  Tears spilled down his cheeks as I stared at him, and then I turned to look at Minnie and the bundle in her arms. A baby.

  ‘I can’t take her …’ she stuttered. ‘I don’t know how …’

  Yet even as she tried to form the words to explain all the reasons why she couldn’t take the baby, I already knew that she would. As the child began to whimper, she instinctively rocked and soothed her.

  Wei Huan grasped my hands. ‘She is called Meihua – named for the plum blossom. My wife said to bring her to you. That you will keep her safe.’

  ‘Shu Lan? She is well?’

  He shook his head. ‘She bleeds heavily. We send for the doctor.’ He stood up and kissed the infant on her forehead. ‘I must go,’ he said. ‘Please. Keep her safe until we are free.’

  Before either of us could say anything, he turned and hurried away into the night.

  All the questions I wanted to ask – about Shu Lan, about how he had brought the child into the camp, about how the guards would ever let us keep her – fell from my lips as he disappeared and left Minnie and me alone with the baby.

  ‘Gosh, Els. Whatever do we do now?’ Minnie whispered.

  ‘We should get her inside, out of the cold.’

  ‘But how will we explain her arrival to the children? And whatever will we tell the guards? They won’t let us keep her if they suspect we’re helping the enemy farmers. What if they take her? Surely he’ll come back for her when Shu Lan recovers?’

  I had agonized over all these questions since Nancy had given me Shu Lan’s secret note.

  ‘If anyone asks, we’ll tell them she’s the twin of another baby born to a Chinese mother in camp. We’ll say we’re helping to mind her because twins are too much for the mother to manage on her own.’

  It was, at least, a plausible explanation and might, if we were lucky, allay any suspicions.

  ‘I suppose it’s as good an explanation as any,’ Minnie conceded, her gaze fixed on the child as she started to fuss and flail her little fists around in a temper. ‘Come along then, little one. That’s all right. Shush now.’

  I looked at her impossibly perfect little face and wondered, just briefly, what would have happened if Minnie hadn’t woken up; if Wei Huan had placed the child in my arms instead of hers? Would I have taken her so willingly, eager to feel the feathery weight of her, or would I have hesitated, insisted he take her back, even? As if she knew what I was thinking, the child gazed up at me, intense black eyes studying mine for a moment, before they flicked back to Minnie and stayed there, as if she knew which one of us needed her the most.

  As Minnie soothed the infant, I felt an emptiness in my arms; the absence of a light ache where a child should have been.

  I wrapped my arms around myself and followed Minnie inside.

  NANCY

  The baby had arrived in the middle of the night.

  I woke to the sound of her squalling, and thought a bomb was being dropped on us. Nobody knew where she’d come from, but I did know she hadn’t been delivered by stork, like Winnie insisted.

  Mouse rolled her eyes. ‘Honestly, Winnie. That’s an old wives’ tale. You should ask Connie Hinshaw where babies come from.’

  ‘Why?’ Winnie asked, sniffing out gossip and scandal. ‘It’s not hers, is it?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then what …’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I sighed. ‘Let’s just say the storks brought her.’

  We all wanted to hold the baby, and held out our fingers for her to grasp.

  ‘She smells like almonds,’ Mouse said as she cuddled her and sniffed the top of her head.

  ‘As you can see – and hear – we have a new arrival,’ Miss Butterworth explained when we were all awake. ‘This is little Meihua. Her name means plum blossom. Unfortunately her parents aren’t able to look after her themselves, so Miss Kent and I have offered to help. And I know you will all be willing to lend a hand, too.’ She went on to explain that they would prefer it if we didn’t talk about the baby to other people.

  ‘Is it a bit like when we kept Tinkerbell hidden in the loft at Temple Hill?’ I asked.

  Miss Butterworth smiled a sad sort of smile. ‘It is, Nancy. But a little more complicated.’

  The baby was soon forgiven for all her noise. It was as if she’d always been there, and we doted on her as if she was a new doll to play with.

  That afternoon, while we were helping Mrs T, I asked her if she thought the baby might be Shu Lan’s. Mouse and I suspected that Shu Lan’s note must have been to ask Miss Kent to look after the baby when it came.

  ‘I suppose it makes sense,’ Mrs T agreed. ‘Shu Lan’s husband was your school gardener, wasn’t he?’

  I nodded. ‘She was a servant at the school, too. But why wouldn’t she be able to look after the baby herself?’

  Mrs T looked at me, her head tilted to one side. ‘There are many reasons why, dear, and even more, given that we’re in the middle of a damned war.’ She frowned and folded her arms. ‘Best not to ask too many questions. As long as the child is safe, that’s all that matters.’

  We both agreed with that.

  ‘Now girls. I don’t suppose either of you happened to find a piece of paper inside one of the library books?’ She held out a copy of The Thirty-Nine Steps. ‘This one?’

  I stared at Mouse, but she kept her eyes on the book and wouldn’t look at me.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘We didn’t find anything.’

  Mrs T muttered something to herself. ‘Well, never mind then. Off you go. I can’t be sitting around talking all day.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell her about the note we found?’ I whispered as we walked back to our side of the compound.

  Mouse shrugged her shoulders. ‘I’m not sure really. I thought I might be in trouble for taking it out.’

  ‘Well you’ll definitely be in trouble now that you’ve lied about it.’

  ‘It’s only a scrap of paper,’ she said. ‘It can’t be that important.’

  ‘Maybe not, but if you still have it, I really think you should give it back to Mrs T.’

  Since
the move from Temple Hill to Weihsien, we’d encountered lots of new guards, most of whom were sour-faced and serious, but Home Run continued to be quietly friendly whenever we saw him. I often thought about how carefully he’d lifted Sprout from the truck and carried her to the hospital when we’d first arrived. Sometimes, when he was certain nobody was looking, he would slip an apple or a Chinese gooseberry into my hands. ‘Shh,’ he would whisper, his finger to his lips. ‘Secret.’ I always shared with Mouse, and we stuffed that fruit into our mouths as fast as we could, juice spilling down our chins. Even Edward didn’t mind me chatting to Home Run as much as he once had. With so many guards being horrid to people, it was nice to know they weren’t all the same inside, even if their uniforms tried to make them all look the same on the outside.

  Home Run had been especially kind after Sprout died. He told us he’d left flowers at her grave.

  ‘All death is very sad,’ he said. ‘But a child. That is the worst.’

  He took a photograph from his jacket pocket and showed us his children. ‘Two girls. Like you!’ he said. He told us he missed them very much, and showed us another photograph, of his wife outside their family home.

  ‘Where do you live?’ Mouse asked.

  ‘Hiroshima. On Honshu island. It is very beautiful.’

  I told him his wife was very beautiful, too.

  He put the photographs away. ‘It is very bad,’ he said, ‘what we do here. I am the shame.’

  ‘Do you mean, ashamed?’ I asked.

  He nodded. ‘Yes. Very ashamed.’

  ‘Then why are you a soldier?’

  ‘I make my father proud. But this …’ He gestured at the compound, and the sword at his waist, and the guards on top of the watchtowers. ‘This is not proud. This is wrong.’

  ‘Why does your Emperor want to control China?’ Mouse asked.

  ‘Men are greedy,’ he said. ‘They want to be rich and powerful, to take what isn’t theirs.’

  ‘Don’t you want to be rich and powerful?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. ‘I want to see my wife and children. I want to go home. Like you.’

  The next time we spoke to Home Run was an unbearably hot afternoon in late summer. Lessons had finished early because of the tremendous heat in the classroom, and we were told to sit in the shade. Me and Mouse were dispatched to the well to fetch water.

  As we made our way slowly back to the others, struggling with the heavy containers of water, I heard a ‘Psst’, and turned to see Home Run sheltering in a doorway at the foot of one of the watchtowers. He beckoned for us to go over to him.

  I glanced up at the high walls. There were no guards on patrol.

  ‘You want to go over?’ Home Run said. ‘The guards are inside. Commandant says it is too hot for anyone to escape.’

  We looked at each other in shock. ‘Go over the wall?’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘You run in the field, and come back. I lift you over.’

  ‘But, we can’t!’ Mouse whispered. ‘We’ll get into awful trouble!’

  ‘Nobody see.’ Home Run smiled. ‘Come. Quick. You promise not to run away?’

  ‘We promise,’ we said, together.

  Where would we run to anyway? We didn’t know where we were, or where we would go.

  I knew we would get into the most awful trouble with the guards, not to mention with Miss Kent if she ever found out, but the temptation to step outside the compound walls, even for a moment, was too great to resist.

  We put down the container of water, and I carefully climbed the wooden steps that led to the top of the watchtower. I gasped as I reached the top. I’d never been so high up. Green and golden fields stretched out on every side, as far as I could see. The compound was like an island in a sea of fields. I’d always imagined we were in the middle of a town, like the compound at Temple Hill, but this … this was a wilderness.

  ‘No wonder nobody has come to save us,’ I gasped as Mouse climbed up beside me. ‘How would they ever find us?’

  ‘Go now,’ Home Run said, an urgency to his voice as he pointed to the field directly in front of the school gate, across a dusty road. ‘When I wave, you come back.’

  We promised again.

  Using a rope that we clung to for dear life, he lifted Mouse down first, then me. We stood together for a second, our backs to the wall, and then I grabbed Mouse’s hand and we ran together across the road into the kaoliang field, my heart racing madly with excitement and terror. The grass was so high it went above the tops of our heads so that in seconds we would have been invisible to anyone looking out from the watchtowers.

  ‘We’re free, Mouse!’ I whispered, gripping her hand tight in mine. ‘We’re free!’

  It was delicious. The air smelled so sweet and fresh and I gulped in great mouthfuls of it. The earth felt soft and rich beneath my feet. The sky was endless and blue. Without walls around us, the world felt suddenly enormous.

  ‘I can’t believe we’re outside the compound!’ Mouse whispered, even though there was nobody to hear us. It was just us, and the birds. ‘Winnie will never believe it!’

  ‘We mustn’t tell her,’ I urged. ‘We can’t tell anyone, Mouse. This has to be our biggest secret ever.’

  We walked through the grass for a moment, and then ran through it, letting our fingers brush against the stalks, just like we used to do on Miss Kent’s field trips at Chefoo. We laughed and stumbled and ran wildly on until we reached a dry riverbed, and came to a stop.

  ‘We should go back,’ I said, suddenly nervous, and unsure of what to do next.

  I turned back to face the compound. Home Run was waving his arms above his head.

  We obediently ran back through the long grass toward him.

  Home Run lowered the rope and lifted us up, one at a time, until we were back over the wall, and it was as if nothing had changed at all, and yet everything was completely different. The walls and watchtowers looked smaller, somehow. Less intimidating.

  He smiled as we brushed grass seeds from our skirts and socks.

  ‘The fields will wait for you,’ he said. ‘You will run in them again.’

  We hid our smiles and our secret for the rest of the afternoon but in our basement room that night, I smiled into the dark. I smiled because I had tasted freedom, and because Home Run was right. The fields, the birds, the sky … they would all wait for me.

  ELSPETH

  1945

  It seemed almost impossible to me that while we remained so dormant and trapped in our small corner of China, the earth took another full turn around the sun, and another year crept over the distant mountains in a palette of apricot and rose.

  ‘The world can be so beautiful, even when it is at war,’ I said as I watched the dawn of the new year with Minnie at my side, as always. ‘I suppose we should take comfort in that.’

  ‘We should indeed,’ Minnie agreed. ‘Take heart, dear Elspeth. One day, that same sky will bring an American aeroplane and brave Allied soldiers parachuting through the clouds.’

  We knocked our tin mugs together in a toast as I said, ‘Amen to that.’

  ‘I’m going to check on Uncle Eric,’ I added. ‘Wish him a happy New Year.’

  ‘How did he seem yesterday?’ Minnie asked.

  ‘The same,’ I replied. ‘Melancholy, and muddled.’

  Even Olympic gold medallists couldn’t protect themselves from the relentless waves of sickness that washed around the compound like a spring tide. Typhoid followed dysentery followed influenza, around and around, until there was hardly anybody who hadn’t been touched by some form of sickness or disease. The strong became weak and the weak became weaker. That was how it was at Weihsien. People became clouds. One minute they were there, the next they’d evaporated into thin fragile wisps and then, nothing.

  I’d first noticed Uncle Eric acting a little strangely around Christmas time. Usually so enthusiastic about marking occasions and important dates, he was silent and withdrawn, and often forgot what he was doin
g. He complained of severe headaches and removed himself from the more boisterous evenings of entertainment, complaining that it was too noisy, and that he found it too tiring.

  When I got to his room, I found him sobbing on his makeshift bed. I apologized for intruding and made to leave, but he asked me to stay.

  ‘Sit with me a moment, will you, Elspeth. I don’t want to be alone.’

  We all went through phases of low morale, or worrying about those at home, but Uncle Eric never had. Until that day.

  ‘I feel uncommonly tired,’ he explained, in his gentle way as I sat beside him. ‘I’m afraid I just don’t have the energy for it anymore.’

  ‘Nonsense. Of course you do. It’s perfectly all right to have a little wallow every now and again. I’d say we’d all be better off if we did it more often rather than going along being all jolly and courageous all the time. That makes me feel uncommonly tired.’

  He smiled weakly. ‘But this is different. I feel tired in my brain, Elspeth. Tired of thinking, and being.’ He sighed a heavy sigh. ‘And I feel so desperately sad about not seeing Florence, and the girls. I have nightmares that I’ll never see them again, and when I wake up I feel so lonely and afraid. Did you know I’ve never seen our littlest? I don’t even know what she looks like. Isn’t that frightfully sad?’

  It was, and I couldn’t think of a single thing to say to make it any less sad.

  ‘You’ll see her soon,’ I offered eventually. ‘When the war’s over. And what a tale you’ll have to tell her then! There’s talk of Allied victory coming in from the outside every day. It’s coming, Eric. Soon. You just need to hold on a little longer.’

  Even I heard the weary echo of dashed hope in my words.

  He nodded, and pressed his hands to mine. ‘You’re right, of course. And I cannot tell you what a wonderful job you are doing with the children. You’re truly remarkable – you, and Almena and everyone in the Chefoo group. What you have done for them is quite extraordinary, and when you lead them back out of that gate, I hope you’ll hold your head high and know that they are walking out because of you.’