The Orchid Tree

by Siobhan Daiko

  On the afternoon of the official flag raising ceremony, Papa opens a suitcase and presents me with one of Mama’s dresses. It’s light blue cotton with a fitted waist and puffed sleeves. I rummage in the case and find a pair of leather high-heeled shoes. After parting my hair at the centre, I pin it into a Victory roll. If only I had a mirror to see my reflection . . .

  Papa puts on a shirt and tie then escorts me to the parade ground, where we take our places with the hundreds of internees.

  A strange-looking vehicle pulls up. Papa says it’s called a jeep. Out of it steps the commander of the fleet, Rear Admiral Cecil Harcourt. A bugle plays the attention and the Union Jack is unfurled, followed by the flags of all the different nationalities that have been interned in the camp. Banners at half-mast, the Last Post is sounded and planes fly overhead. Everyone sings, Oh God, Our Help in Ages Past.

  A light wind blows in from the bay, cooling my father and me in the August heat, and lifting the notes of the bugle. The flags unfurl and fly over the colony once more.

  Our hope for years to come, I sing, and the expectation I’ll see Charles soon swells my heart.

  ***

  A fortnight later, I’m standing at the railings of a small aircraft carrier converted from a merchant ship that will take Papa and me to Sydney, Australia. The vessel picked us up at Stanley and now we’re heading out of Hong Kong waters. Chinese white dolphins frolic in the ship’s bow-waves, escorting us towards the open sea. I said goodbye to Ah Ho yesterday. My amah is returning to China with the promise of a job as soon as Papa gets back from his extended leave. He’s given her some of the silver dug up from the garden to help with expenses.

  A blast from the ship’s funnel sends vibrations through the railings. I run my hands down the cold metal then put my fingers to my mouth, tasting the salt. It reminds me of the tears I shed only hours ago.

  I went to say goodbye to the Pearces straight after breakfast. They were sitting on their beds, their faces puffed from crying.

  ‘Oh Kate,’ Mrs Pearce said, getting to her feet and putting her arms around me. ‘My sister visited last night. We’ve had the most dreadful news.’ She pointed to a cushion. ‘You’d better sit down.’ She took both hands and made eye contact with me. ‘Be prepared for a shock, my dear. The ship . . .’

  Mrs Pearce controlled her breathing, let a full breath stutter out, and took another.

  ‘The ship taking Charles . . . Charles and the other prisoners, to Japan . . .’ She had to stop again. The blood rushed from my head and my feet began to swim away from me.

  ‘The ship was bombed and sunk by the Americans,’ Mr Pearce said quietly, his teeth clenching shut immediately the words were out. ‘Charles isn’t listed . . . among the survivors.’

  I sobbed and pleaded with his family that it couldn’t be true, but they said Phillip Noble had telegraphed Shanghai, where the survivors had been taken, and Charles’ name wasn’t recorded among them.

  I went completely silent then, shutting out the horror. I didn’t look at anyone, because if I had done so it would have become real. I stared out the window and kept my body as still as I could. Ruth ran to fetch help, and there was a commotion when Papa came with Tony Chambers. They half-carried me back to the Indian Quarters. I hadn’t even managed to get the Pearces’ address in London.

  ***

  The ship heads towards the horizon now and I turn my gaze to the back of the Peak, swathed in fog. Up there, in the swirling mists, is my home. Hong Kong recedes in the distance, and the image of Charles’ face comes into my mind: high cheekbones, warm eyes and dark brown hair that flops across his forehead. I step away from the railings and glance at the back of my left hand. It’s bleeding. The blood has caked under my newly-grown fingernails.

  PART TWO

  1948-1949

  16

  James Stevens stood next to Tony Chambers on the armour-plated bridge of the Customs Preventive ship. He glanced at the sky. Nearly daybreak. Shouldn’t be long now. Catching smugglers would make a welcome change from surveying.

  He steadied himself and rolled with the swell, breathing in the scents of China carried by the wind: the musk of wood smoke, the bitter stench of the communal latrines and the fragrance of myriad joss sticks. So different to the smell of coal fires and the rotten-egg pong of the Thames in London.

  Stubbing out his cigarette, he heard his father’s words as if they were being spoken right next to him, ‘Join the Navy and see the world, son.’

  Hot tears welled up. James was a man now, twenty-five, and he’d taken his demob two years ago. He touched his inside pocket where that final letter from home nestled with his cigarettes. No need to read it, he knew it by heart.

  Last night one of those German doodlebugs flew over, Mother had written. We held our breaths as the terrible rasping, grating noise cut out and the rocket came crashing down on the newsagents up the road. I can’t tell you how terrified we were.

  James’ vision blurred. A week after the letter had arrived, he’d received a telegram informing him his parents had died in a raid from another deadly flying bomb. At first, he hadn’t believed it. How could they both have been carted lifeless from under a pile of debris? Mother had always tried to make the best of herself by sleeping with her chestnut-coloured hair in rag curlers every night and putting on fresh lipstick every morning. Dad never left the house unshaven. Mother would have been taken from the wreckage with pale lips and her hair still in rags. Dad’s chin would have been covered in stubble.

  James had gone home on leave shortly afterwards, and then he’d finally accepted the truth. A heavy sensation in his stomach, he’d stumbled over the rubble until he’d reached the two-up-two-down house where he’d grown up. The wallpaper he’d helped hang flapped in the wind, the picture of a battleship was still pinned to his bedroom wall, but the side of the building had opened to the world. Broken glass crunched as he’d dragged his feet from room to room and, in the air, lingered the sour smell of plaster made wet by the rain.

  James dried his eyes. There was no reason for him to return to London, or even England. His family was dead and the letter was the one thing he had left of them. If only he could tell Mother and Dad he’d got a job in the Far East. They would have been so proud of him; they’d never been farther than Brighton.

  Timbers creaked in the distance and sails flapped. Bouncing on his toes, James gave the command, ‘Full ahead!’

  Sirens screamed as the ship surged forward. Phosphorescence from plankton glowed in the moonlight, lighting up the bow-wave. They were closing in on a large fishing junk.

  He glanced at his Chief Officer. Tony wiped spray from his grey-flecked beard. ‘Get ready to shoot!’

  James switched on the searchlight and supervised the loading of the Vickers three-pounder. He sighted the three masts and fish-fin sails of the vessel, ploughing through the waves about three hundred yards away. A shot across the bow should do the trick. He would board the junk, order the halyards sliced, and tow it back to Hong Kong. The smugglers would have to find their own way home. ‘One round ahead!’

  Third Officer Wang aimed to the side and with enough range to drop the shell in front of the junk. But it had changed tack and was going flat out to disappear around the back of a large island silhouetted against the stars.

  ‘Bugger!’ What were they playing at? It was a fair cop and they should give themselves up.

  The Customs ship followed, propellers thumping, searchlight at full beam. The junk had entered a narrow inlet. James hadn’t surveyed this area yet. He turned to Coxswain, a sinewy Chinese man. ‘Can we get up there?’

  ‘Sometime can. Sometime no can.’

  ‘Cut the engines!’ James took a sounding by lowering a lead line. ‘No go.’

  ‘We’ll follow them in the motorboat,’ Tony said, handing James a pistol.

  They lowered the runner, winching it down from its position on deck. The boat hit the water with a splash. Barely keeping his footing, James followed Tony,
Wang and three sailors armed with rifles down a rope ladder that flapped in the breeze.

  The sky lightened and James steered the boat up the creek, carefully avoiding the dark rocks looming below the surface. They rounded a bend. The junk had run ashore and the crew were scuttling like ants around a dead cockroach, carrying what looked like cans of kerosene from the flat-bottomed vessel.

  The motorboat beached. James jumped out behind Tony, his boots squelching in the sludge. Exhilaration coursed through him. The sun had risen fully now; night turned to day quickly in these parts. The gang had vanished into the mangroves, but a slim youth wearing a bobble hat pulled down to his eyes, in a tunic and baggy black trousers, was struggling on the mud flats.

  Tony pointed. ‘Grab him!’

  James made a move in the direction of the youth, but Wang got there before him. With deft movements, the Third Officer yanked the boy’s hands behind his back and tied them.

  ‘How dare you do this to me?’ the prisoner called out in a shrill voice.

  ‘Lash him to that iron ring at the bottom of the junk,’ Tony yelled to Wang. ‘The tide has turned. With any luck it’ll cover him before too long.’

  James stared at his Chief Officer; he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Is this some kind of joke?’

  ‘They won’t let him drown. Someone will come before we have to set the lad free. And it’ll save us the trouble of flushing the smugglers out of the undergrowth.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘Experience. You’ll see.’

  James shrugged. An ex-Royal Navy Lieutenant Commander, Tony had been in the Chinese Maritime Customs since before the war. He was in his early fifties now, twice James’ age. He bowed to Tony’s superior knowledge and turned away.

  Wang marched the boy across the shingle, through the waist-high water, and up to the junk, where he tied him to the ring. James lowered himself down on a smooth rock, took out his cigarette case, and gave a Player’s to Tony. He leaned forward. His Chief Officer pulled a lighter from his pocket and held it out.

  James inhaled until his head buzzed. He turned and peered at the hostage. They were in a typical tidal creek that dried to a muddy channel at low tide, but would be flooded quickly when the tide came in. The sea had already risen as far as the boy’s chest. He must be freezing; water temperatures in winter were a far cry from the tepid seas of summer. James tapped his index finger against his mouth, doubt twisting his gut. ‘Are you sure this is going to work?’

  ‘Trust me!’

  James shook his head slowly. Tony must know what he was doing. Everything was under control. He gazed at the top of the beach. In the pale sunlight, the roots of the mangrove opened out like giant fingers; they would be flooded soon. The bottom of the junk would be submerged in no time and the boy with it. The smugglers were probably watching from behind the scrub and they might be armed. His hand hovered over his gun.

  A scream reverberated across the waves. Water was lapping at the prisoner’s chin. Enough! James leapt to his feet. ‘If you don’t untie him, I will,’ he said to Tony.

  ‘Calm down!’ Tony grabbed his arm. ‘Someone’s coming.’

  A portly Chinese man waddled towards them from the edge of the mangroves. ‘Let go my niece!’

  Niece? James stared at the man. The smuggler hawked phlegm from his throat, and spat it onto the sand.

  ‘Before we untie anybody,’ Tony said, ‘hand over the goods!’

  The man wagged a finger. ‘You let go my niece first!’

  ‘The goods first,’ Tony repeated.

  Another scream resounded from the junk. ‘Uncle!’

  The smuggler barked orders to his men, and they reappeared from the mangroves with the cans.

  ‘Go to it,’ Tony said, handing James a knife.

  James gave his pistol to Wang, kicked off his shoes, shrugged off his shirt, and waded into the sea. He swam hard, making frantic strokes for the final couple of yards. Then he dived underwater. In the murk he searched around for the ropes, and sliced into them.

  Hands freed, the prisoner slid from his grip and swam towards the beach. James followed, but a wave came from nowhere and knocked his head against the side of the junk. He gulped salt water, his heartbeat echoing in his ears. His arms flailed and his eyes lost focus. He clutched at his throat, gasping for breath.

  Someone grabbed his waistband and pulled him upwards. A hand cupped his chin; he was being hauled back to the shore.

  James dragged himself to his feet, staring at the person who’d rescued him. Hat removed, wet hair fell dark and long over the slight shoulders of a young woman. Bloody hell!

  ‘I thought you were supposed to be rescuing me,’ she said, jutting out her chin. She shivered and rubbed her wrists where the rope had left red marks.

  James coughed, and a searing pain slashed through his lungs. ‘So did I,’ he said, taking an agonising breath. He retched, and vomited brine. The girl studied him, her arms folded.

  Wang and the smuggler came up. Teeth chattering, James took his shirt from the Third Officer. Where was Tony? James gazed around. His Chief Officer was busy seizing the goods and loading them into the motor boat. They would have to make several journeys to ferry them to the ship. James took one step forward, but his knees gave way and he grabbed hold of Wang.

  Wang lifted him into the boat, James’ legs scraping the rails. Tony’s face came into view. ‘What the hell happened to you?’

  ‘Nearly drowned,’ James coughed.

  ‘We’d better get you to a hospital.’

  He lay on the deck. Tony had gone off somewhere. Was that him in a huddle with the smugglers? James couldn’t be sure. Bizarrely, the mangroves behind the beach had turned into a dragon, similar to the one the locals danced with at Chinese New Year. A niggle at the back of his mind. Why hadn’t Tony given the order to seize the junk? James coughed again; he could hardly breathe.

  17

  Sofia marched up the plank to the prow of the junk. She stared at the departing Englishmen. Her so-called rescuer’s cropped curls had reminded her of the burnished copper coins she’d collected as a child. Interesting, but he was a gwailo foreigner and a Customs’ man; she doubted she’d see him again.

  ‘Why didn’t you send someone to free me sooner?’ she asked her uncle. ‘I was frightened.’

  ‘You? Afraid? What about all that kung fu?’ He laughed. ‘In any case, you shouldn't have stowed away on my junk.’

  Uncle was right; she shouldn’t have. He often took her with him now the war was over. After he’d refused this time she’d wanted to find out why. Once he’d discovered her hiding among the kerosene cans, he’d told her about his plan. His ingenious plan. Uncle was so clever.

  Movement at the edge of the swamp, and Uncle’s assistant, Derek Higgins, approached, blond hair plastered to his damp forehead and a knapsack hanging from his shoulder. He negotiated the gangplank and opened his bag. With a satisfied grin, he let two gold bars drop onto the deck.

  Sofia laughed. The Customs’ men had fallen for the ruse. Half-drowning hadn’t been part of the plan, but she was safe and so was the gold. She went down to her cabin and took off her peasant outfit. The padded tunic had been warm at first, and the binding with which she’d swathed her breasts had made it easier to run. Such a pity her shoes had got stuck . . .

  Adrenaline had kept her going through the night, yet now her legs wobbled so much she could barely stand. She towel-dried her hair, pulled back the blanket, and climbed into her bunk. Closing her eyes, she hugged herself to stop the tremors. Uncle was wrong. For a few moments she’d been terrified nobody would cut those ropes in time.

  ***

  The next evening, Sofia sat with Father drinking tea. ‘It’s time for my opium,’ he said. ‘Will you prepare my pipe?’

  She followed his stooped frame to the large front room divided by a black lacquered antique Chinese screen. Despite seeing it practically every day of her life, she still loved the beauty of the Sung Dy
nasty city depicted in gold, the river spanned by a bridge crowded with ordinary people and aristocrats in their sedan chairs.

  When she was little she used to imagine all sorts of stories about the screen, the workers on foot carrying their goods up the path to the tea-houses, the farmers tending their crops and livestock, the boats on the river lining up to dock. An idyllic scene. It was a shame real life wasn’t like that . . .

  Father grunted. She gazed at his ravaged face. Until a year ago, he’d been handsome, but now the strains of illness had robbed him of his looks. His mouth, once full, was a thin scar; his cheeks had hollowed and his eyes seemed sunken. Tears stung and Sofia opened a drawer.

  The stem of the pipe was fashioned out of carved ivory that had yellowed with age. She smeared a pinch of thick, sticky black resin over a pinhole in the spherical bowl at the base, lit a lamp, and held the bowl over the flame. The opium vaporised. With trembling hands, she handed the pipe to him.

  Tonight she prepared one for herself as well. It would help her cope. She sucked the rich, sweet-tasting vapour into her lungs and exhaled through her nostrils. Almost immediately, it was as if her mind had been freed. Her body relaxed. Although it wasn’t customary to chat while smoking opium, there was something she needed to know. ‘Father,’ she said, stroking his fingers. ‘Uncle told me you haven’t much time left. Please say it isn’t true.’

  ‘I’m sorry, querida.’ Father lifted his bony shoulders in a sigh. ‘The cancer has spread. Don’t worry, you’ll be well looked after. Your brother will make sure of it. Promise me you’ll be nice to him!’

  Eyes half-closed, Sofia caught the sharp note in his voice. She wasn’t a regular user and the rare times she smoked with him, she fell into dreams before he did.

  ‘Promise me!’

  His voice seemed to come from far away. She wanted to answer, but the opium had taken hold and she drifted off.