by Jean Moran
She looked so neat from her bare brown feet,
To the tip of her chestnut hair...
Over and over again the words sang in her head keeping her mind focused and the chilly night at bay.
Everything will be worth it, she thought. The present will pass and I’ll be living in the future.
*
It was two days later when the message was delivered and from an unexpected source.
The children had not gone to school because the Groblers were attending the funeral of an old friend some miles distant and expected to be away for a few days.
As a consequence there was no school and Luli had been requisitioned to look after Dawn while the couple were away. This has to be our main chance, thought Rowena, and it turned out she was right.
Walking in the courtyard, she saw a guard she recognised snap off the head of a heavy chrysanthemum. Nobody else saw him. She wondered why he had done it and how angry Kim would be. Above everything else in the world, it seemed Kim’s only love was for himself and the flowers.
She half turned away from him before remembering that he was the guard whose wound she had treated.
‘Madam.’ He handed her the flower.
She took it and thanked him.
Once he was back at his post and she was alone with nothing but chrysanthemums for company – she was quickly coming to hate them – she took a closer look at the bright yellow head and its tiny curling petals that made up the whole. Rolled into one of its petals was a slip of paper. She took it out, read it and felt her heartbeat quicken.
Dawn, and an address in Kowloon. All she had to do was get there and Kim was inadvertently providing her with the opportunity.
*
From the moment they arrived in Kowloon Kim’s grandmother refused to look her in the face, looking away every time she appeared.
Dawn had been snatched to safety and the opportunity for her to escape had finally arisen but even Kim didn’t know that yet.
Today was the day Zu Mu chose to go for a drive and Kim ordered Rowena to go too. She bowed to his will, hardly able to believe her luck. Out of his sight she refrained from skipping, but she couldn’t stop herself smiling.
She secreted the address and the piece of jade on her person along with a few coins Koto had added to pay a rickshaw driver. She also put on two layers of clothes and a pair of black Chinese shoes with white rubber soles. High-heeled red shoes would be no use for what she had in mind.
To her dismay the old lady ordered the driver to take a country road away from the city.
She tried not to appear agitated, but calmed when the driver said something to the old lady that made her change her mind. The driver, the man who had brought her the message, changed direction and headed for the centre of Kowloon.
Crowded with street traders, the car slowed to walking pace. The old lady leaned forward, berating the driver, perhaps about his slow driving.
Rowena suspected he had purposely driven into the most crowded alley and Zu Mu was not amused. The car slowed to walking pace, nosing its way through the stranglehold of crowds. The drumming of her heart was so loud she was half afraid the old lady would hear it, but Zu Mu was too busy beating the driver about the shoulders, the pair shouting at each other.
It was too good an opportunity to miss. She opened the car door, got out into the milling crowds and was easily lost. Behind her she heard the old lady screaming at the top of her voice, guessing she was calling for assistance, that the woman in the green silk trousers and tunic was a thief and should be brought back to her immediately.
There was no way either of them would come after her. The driver would not leave the car and his employer’s grandmother alone, and the old lady had bound feet so could barely walk, let alone run.
Crowded as it was, Rowena breathed in the scent of food being cooked in the open air and heard the shouts of tailors offering their services to make an outfit from silk. Freedom had never tasted so good. If it hadn’t been for the fact that she was wearing Chinese garb, she could almost have believed she was back in 1941 when she and Alice had ventured there, visited Connor’s Bar, first met Connor and also the man who had charmed them into sitting at his table.
As she ran she thought of Connor, her blue-eyed Irishman, and again heard him singing inside her head. Was he still alive? Would he one day come back to Kowloon, reclaim his violin and reopen his bar?
Her heart skipped a beat at the thought of it. Things could have been so different if the colony had held out, or if the army and supporting medical staff had fallen back to Singapore and thence to Australia.
She was careful to keep her head down and not to stare at the off-duty Japanese soldiers picking at merchandise, laughing with their comrades, leering at the girls hanging over the balconies.
Having black hair and not too light a complexion was a definite plus. Nobody stopped her, nobody questioned where she was going, winding in and out of the crowds and the alleys into narrower alleys until she came to the address she’d been given. House of Peace, an address she knew was adjacent to Connor’s Bar.
It was only a pile of rubble now, but behind it was an opening in the wall and a Chinese character she’d last seen on the entrance to the alley: one woman under one roof. This was it.
Powdery dust rose from the tumbled blocks as she clambered over them to what looked like a cave set among piled rubble. The front lintel was propped up with wooden trusses and a green tarpaulin formed a canopy that almost made it look like a proper shop. Only the tops of heads were visible in the blue shade of the interior.
She stopped, her heart thudding. What if those glossy-haired heads were Japanese? She had to take the chance.
‘Is anyone there?’
A single head bobbed up, and there was Luli, grinning from ear to ear.
She reached down beside her and a smaller figure, which had been out of sight, also stood up. Hand in hand they waited until she was there, standing directly in front of them.
She was speechless. Tears streamed down her face as the full consequences of what she’d been through and what she’d escaped finally hit her.
‘Honourable Doctor,’ said Luli, and bowed.
Dawn bowed too. ‘Mummy!’ And threw herself into her mother’s arms.
24
1945
‘It’s over!’
It seemed that the whole of Hong Kong had erupted with joy, the shouting, the laughing, and the ever-present firecrackers combining to celebrate the final ending of the war.
Rowena had just delivered a breech birth, a baby boy. The hospitals were a place of fear, mostly frequented, as they were, by Japanese soldiers and medical staff, so the woman had given birth in her own home, her family sending for the doctor-midwife when complications arose.
More firecrackers exploded in the street.
She wiped her hands and asked the new mother’s sister what was going on. ‘It’s not new year, is it?’
When she heard again the shout of ‘It’s all over!’ she threw down the towel on which she’d wiped her hands, picked up her bag and dashed out into the street.
‘It’s over! It’s over!’
People spilled onto the alley from their houses and shops, laughing, singing, shouting and letting off enough firecrackers to fill the air with blue smoke. Now the explosions would not result in death but inspire even more joy.
Hopping, skipping, running, barely able to keep her feet on the ground, she ran all the way back to the building that had been semi-derelict when she’d first arrived but was now partially rebuilt. Together she, Luli and Yang had laboured with heavy blocks, made mortar from whatever they could find to give them better shelter.
‘Have you heard?’ she shouted, as excited as a child about to blow out the candles on a birthday cake. ‘The war is over. I heard it on the streets coming here. Japan has surrendered.’
Yang ran to find his own store of firecrackers. Luli got out a few faded paper lanterns from a box as well as a silk
dragon, the head as big as a tea chest, its tail at least six feet long.
‘Up here. We put it up here.’
As Dawn clapped her little hands, they hung it above the new entrance along with the old sign saying Connor’s Bar.
‘I only hope nobody thinks we’re actually a bar. We’ve got no beer,’ Rowena pointed out.
‘Rice wine,’ said Yang, bringing out a crate from the back.
‘Now where did you get that?’
Yang tapped the side of his nose. ‘You not know, you not say.’
He’d stolen it from some army storeroom.
‘That looks good,’ said Rowena, hands on hips as she stood back and admired the slightly tatty dragon they’d just hung up.
Still feeling good about the new world they were now part of, she suddenly became aware of Yang looking beyond her out into the alley, his expression less than friendly. On turning, she found herself face to face with a Japanese soldier. He looked a sorry sight, his face black and blue from the beatings the locals were meting out to any Japanese soldier unlucky enough to wander their way.
He looked straight at her. ‘Doctor. I Shimida.’
‘He’s Japanese,’ said Luli, her tone leaving Rowena in no doubt that she would rather see the man die than be treated.
‘I know him. Shimmy?’
He nodded. It was indeed the guard from the camp who had made Dawn a wooden doll.
She took a step towards him, catching him just before he collapsed. Luli hung back, unwilling to help a man she regarded as an enemy.
Yang helped her get Shimmy indoors where he collapsed onto the floor.
‘He was kind to Dawn,’ she explained to Yang. ‘Bandages. And fresh water. Do we have any?’
The water supply had been sporadic of late so they had taken the precaution of storing quantities in buckets and tins, purely for those moments when there was only a trickle.
Shimmy’s face was shiny with sweat, but swiftly growing paler as dark red blood seeped out of his guts and through his uniform. He winced as she began to undo his jacket, then caught her hand and said something in Japanese.
‘I’m sorry. I don’t speak Japanese.’ She shouted at Yang to come and translate. Thanks to a little wheeling and dealing with the occupying forces, he’d picked up the language quite well.
Shimmy reached inside his tunic and brought out his wallet. She recalled seeing it before, the photograph of his wife and family inside.
He repeated what he’d said. Yang translated. ‘He says he knows he is about to join his ancestors, his wife and family too.’
‘Does he mean that his wife and family are dead? How does he know that?’
Yang again translated. ‘His home is in Hiroshima. He heard about the great bomb that fell on his city, about the many dead.’
With shaking, clawing fingers, Shimmy laid his hand on her arm. His voice was weaker now. Yang had to get closer to hear what he was saying. ‘He says your daughter reminded him of his youngest when she was small. He hopes she will live.’
She looked at the photograph of a pretty woman and her two daughters, all dressed in their best to have their photo taken so her husband might have a memento to take with him to war.
He uttered a few more words.
‘He wants you to keep these. He has nothing else to leave to anyone and nobody to leave it to. Everyone is gone.’
Another whispered few words...
‘To remind the world of these times and to pray that they never happen again.’
‘Amen,’ Shimmy said.
From within his wallet she extracted a crucifix. Shimmy, the Japanese Christian.
*
They buried Shimmy in the cemetery of a ruined church. The photographs of his family Rowena placed, with her own few valuables, in a leather case Yang had purloined for her.
Shimmy stayed in her mind for days afterwards. She recalled the doll he’d made for Dawn and her own reaction, throwing it at his feet and telling him to keep away from her child. On account of his nationality, she’d thrown his offering back at him, and had not relented even when he’d shown her his family photo and Marjorie had explained that he smuggled in medicines and food. He had aroused painful memories and she could not, would not give in.
Yang had closed the man’s eyes and tears had streamed down Rowena’s face, not just for him but for the stupidity and cruelty of the whole human race. That cruelty and stupidity had been emphasised when details began to circulate of what the bomb had done.
Leaving Dawn in the care of Luli, she made her way across the bay to mainland Hong Kong and Fort Stanley. The camp was a hive of activity as the inmates prepared to be processed and given the choice of staying in Hong Kong or going home – wherever home might be.
She recognised the stalwart figures of O’Malley and Alice, sitting in the sun, as the Red Cross and other medical assistance eddied around them, taking over the duties they had done.
Alice was leaning against a sun-splashed wall with her eyes closed. It was O’Malley who saw her first.
‘Well, if it isn’t Dr Rossiter. Excuse me if I don’t get up, Doctor. I’ve had a case of dysentery and I might fall over.’
‘Rowena?’ Alice struggled to her feet.
She was thinner than ever but there was hope in her eyes.
The two women hugged.
Rowena reached down and clutched O’Malley’s shoulder. ‘So good to see you. Where’s Marjorie?’
They shook their heads.
‘Pneumonia.’
‘How’s that little imp of yours?’
‘Dawn’s fine. She wants to go to school. I’m not sure yet whether to return to England or stay here.’
Alice’s eyes narrowed. ‘You love it here. You wouldn’t feel at home in England. There are no battles to fight.’
‘I’ve had enough of war!’
‘I said battles. You’ve fought your way through a few of the personal kind.’
‘And come out the other side.’
She realised Alice had a point. ‘I thought I might get involved in helping the refugees who are likely to flood into Hong Kong. That could be quite a battle, but I have Dawn to consider. I’m not sure how she’ll fit into a post-war Hong Kong. It’ll be a long time before the Chinese forgive the Japanese for what they’ve done.’
‘Will you?’
‘I never used to think so, but now?’ She told them about Shimmy, his photo and her surprise to discover he was a Christian. ‘I know that shouldn’t make a difference, but up until then I was making assumptions, thinking they were all the same, that there was no good side to them, yet I know now Shimmy meant no harm. I just wasn’t listening.’
O’Malley struggled to her feet. ‘What next, I wonder?’
The Red Cross had set up a relief centre where they were given tea and biscuits.
Their mood lightened as they began discussing the future and what it might hold for all of them.
Alice said she would be going back to Sydney. ‘My family have been writing to me for years but I’ve only just received their letters. I need to get back there so they see me in the flesh. Knowing my mother, she’ll want to fatten me up. Steaks and lamb stews every day if she has her way.’
‘I’m going to get married.’
Surprised, they both looked at O’Malley.
‘Don’t look at me as though I’m already a corpse. So what if I’m in my fifties? I’m not at the end of the trail just yet. There’s a widower back home who told me before I left that he’d wait for me. I just hope somebody else hasn’t snapped him up.’
There was much more talk and more laughter before they asked her about Kim.
‘You look better than all of us.’
She shook her head. ‘I’ve been in Kowloon for some time. Just the thought of him still gives me the creeps.’
‘He didn’t... well... you know...’
Alice was being hesitant and Rowena was grateful for that. It meant she could be hesitant too. ‘That wasn’t what h
e wanted. Our smooth-talking Prince Charming was not what he seemed.’
‘A wolf in disguise?’
‘No. A madman.’
They sensed the shivers she was suppressing and let the subject drop.
‘Will you ever go back to England?’
‘It holds no great attraction, but who knows what the future holds?’
O’Malley nodded. ‘I can understand that. It won’t be easy.’
‘It also helps that I now speak some Cantonese, even a bit of Mandarin.’
Time flew, the teacups were emptied and refilled twice, but at last they fell into a comfortable silence, having agreed that they would keep in touch. They would share the same memories and would always feel warm commitment to their friendship.
*
Engrossed in her work, she gave no thought to returning to England until two separate things occurred. First, she received a letter from her brother asking her if she would like to invest in his new business venture, a pub on the side of a river in a beautiful spot. Second, she saw Kim Pheloung, who had a new car, which could only mean that he was back on form and was yet again taking advantage of whatever opportunities the aftermath of war offered.
It seemed that the only path open to her was to go back to England where he could not touch her. With that in mind she sent money to her brother on the understanding that he would provide her with a house in which she could bring up her child.
When she finally received a reply, she was living in an apartment in Hong Kong and Luli was there too, employed as nanny and housemaid, having been turned down by the Australian authorities.
The letter was straight and to the point.
Dear Rowena,
I am very grateful for your offer to fund my business scheme and I think it might very well have worked if it was only you who was coming here.
After talking it over with Wendy, we agreed that it might be a bad idea seeing as you now have a child who is not of pure English blood.
My wife feels the only way it might work is if you send her to boarding school, perhaps one in Hong Kong? After all, that is where the child was born.
I know this might sound a bit harsh, and you are my sister after all, but we already have one half-caste child in this village, and having another, even of a different race, might not be a good idea.
