When We Were Young & Brave

by Hazel Gaynor

  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 remarkable—you, and Almena and everyone in the Chefoo group. What you have done for them is truly 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.”

  “You are very kind to say so, but we do nothing that anyone else wouldn’t do in our situation. Now, I must leave you to get some rest. Send word if you need anything.”

  He promised he would.

  It was the last conversation I had with him.

  He struggled bravely on for several weeks, until he fell into a coma, and passed onto the next life on a bright February morning.

  “He never once complained, or blamed, or resented,” I said when Charlie told me the awful news. “Did you know he once told me he forgave them—the soldiers? He believed there was good in everyone. Even here, when he’d seen some of the worst of humanity, he still believed in universal goodness.”

  Charlie offered me a scrap of what had once been a handkerchief to wipe my tears.

  “He was the best of all of us,” he said. “He was what we should all aspire to be.”

  Uncle Eric’s funeral was attended by almost the entire camp. Nobody could believe that such a vital, vibrant soul had been taken from us. We’d thought him invincible; immune to such things as disease. He was everyone’s friend, father, brother. A dear uncle to us all.

  So many people wished to pay their respects that there wasn’t room in the church, and many of us had to stand outside during the short service. His simple wooden coffin was then carried down Rocky Road to the cemetery beside the guards’ house. A Guard of Honor was formed and his coffin interred as a silence descended over the mourners, the only sound that of the birds singing in the branches above us.

  I wept for this good gentle man, taken too soon. I wept for his wife and children. I wept because he had lived the last of his years here, in this place, and because part of him, part of us all, would forever be interred here, inside the compound walls, looking for a way out.

  When everyone else had dispersed, I took the little parcel of sunflower seeds from my pocket and pushed one into the fresh earth of his grave. New life, to remember that which had been lost.

  “Another sunflower?”

  Startled, I turned to the familiar voice. “Minnie! I hadn’t realized you’d waited for me.”

  “How many are left now?” she asked as she linked her arm through the crook of mine.

  “Four,” I said. “And I hope it stays that way.”

  * * *

  Despite the hunger that gnawed in my stomach, and the melancholy that hung over the compound that evening, I felt the need to add a few lines to my diary. I wanted to capture my thoughts while they were fresh. I wanted to document the facts: that we lived and struggled, cherished the arrival of new life, and mourned that which was lost.

  We go on. We wake up each day and find some way to make it bearable. The baby gives us immense joy—her precious coos and grasping little fingers thankfully know nothing of war, yet it breaks my heart to know that her mother is missing her, aching for her. I take comfort from nature: from the birds; the sky. They offer a glimpse of life beyond the compound walls, and remind us that there is beauty in its dramatic sunsets and gentle sunrises. I look to the sky for hope, for a future I have to believe is out there. I ask myself if it will ever end, if we will ever walk through the compound gates? It is impossible now to be certain of the answer.

  * * *

  Rumors that two men had escaped spread quickly along the line at roll call the following morning. The numbers wouldn’t tally and the guards, growing increasingly frustrated and then angry, wouldn’t dismiss us until everyone was accounted for.

  Hour after hour, we repeated our numbers until it was eventually established that the missing numbers belonged to two men from Block 35. The commandant was furious. Dogs were sent snarling toward the nine other men who shared the same room. They were marched off to the church to be interrogated.

  News of the escape was both shocking and thrilling. That someone had successfully avoided the electric fences and barbed wire and the ever-watchful eyes of the guards long enough to get a good distance away sent a ripple of hope around the camp. We talked about nothing else all day.

  “Did you know anything about it?” I asked Charlie, keeping my voice low as we walked to the kitchen.

  He assured me he had nothing to do with it. “Believe me, Elspeth, I have no desire to go back to solitary.” He had, however, heard that the escape had been arranged with the help of Chinese guerrilla soldiers hiding out in the fields outside the compound. “The two men got out at a precut gap in the barbed wire,” he explained. “Just after the guards changed their watch, around midnight.”

  It reminded me of the daring food drop we’d arranged at Chefoo. It seemed so innocent now compared to the dangers here.

  “Are they going to fetch help?” I asked.

  He nodded and checked over his shoulder for anyone listening. “It’s hoped they’ll gather reliable intelligence and stay close enough to send coded messages into camp,” he explained. “Information is our best weapon now. With information, we can prepare.”

  “Prepare for what?”

  He took in a deep breath and let out a sigh. “For whatever’s next.”

  But the escape meant the guards had been deeply humiliated, and those who’d been on watch while it happened were punished. I was terrified of reprisals, and of the inevitable scrutiny and forensic searches we would be subjected to. Charlie assured me he had already dismantled his little radio and disposed of the component parts. Everyone was suspected of being involved, and those with a record of insubordination, including Charlie, would surely be first on the guards’ list. The response from the rest of the guards was to reassert their authority with a renewed hatred of their enemy prisoners.

  Later that morning, the men who’d shared accommodation with the escapees returned from their questioning and were forced to dig a second deep trench along the entire length of the compound walls. A tangled mass of electrified barbed wire was placed on the other side of the trench, making it virtually impossible for anyone to attempt an escape. It was also announced that a second daily roll call would take place every evening. Recreation time was banned. Curfew was brought forward an hour. To Edwina’s dismay, all books were also confiscated, and the men and women who came to empty the latrines were thoroughly searched at the compound gates every time they came in, and again, when they left.

  Only two days after the escape, one of the men was found to have a message concealed in the hem of his jacket. We were all summoned to the parade ground and forced to watch his beating.

  “Look away, girls,” I urged. “Find a cloud, or a tree, and look at that instead. Recite the Psalms or your favorite songs silently in your heads. Whatever you do, don’t look.”

  They looked anyway.

  Again and again the bamboo sticks rained down on the poor man’s body. Verse after verse of “Rule Britannia” circled through my mind, but still the beatings came until eventually he lay in a motionless heap on the ground. He was then dragged away, bloodied and bruised, and surely dead.

  We gathered the Chefoo children and prayed for him.

  “I wish the men hadn’t escaped, Miss,” Nancy said. “I don’t think the guards will be very kind to the rest of us now.”

  I did my best to reassure her, to reassure them all, but my own fears echoed hers, even as I told her we were perfectly safe.

  * * *

  I’d always been an early riser, waking before everyone else. I liked to sit alone and watch the sun come up over the church, and listen to the birds. There was something necessary and restorative about that time of day; time when I could think and try to make some sense of things that made
no sense at all. But it was also the time when I faltered; when I let myself wonder. What would happen if I walked away from our dark basement and placed a ladder against the compound walls and started to climb? What if I ran, screaming, at the gates, and demanded they let me out? Even in the gentle light of early morning, there were dark moments, a sort of madness, when I found myself willing to accept the punishment rather than continue with this passive acceptance. But I sat just long enough for the sun to rise, and the darkness to pass, and Minnie or one of the girls would stir. That was when I stood up, brushed the dust from my skirt, windmilled my arms, and got on with it.

  Several days passed, and there was still much discussion about the escape. Our accommodation was searched repeatedly (thankfully, the guards weren’t remotely interested in baby Meihua, focused instead on discovering any hidden messages or means of receiving communication from the outside). We were also summoned to an impromptu roll call in the middle of the night. Tensions between inmates and guards were higher than they’d ever been, and I felt the latent threat of Trouble’s presence around every corner.

  I was making my way back from visiting Dorothy’s grave when I saw him, lurking beside the barracks.

  He stepped forward to block my way.

  “Excuse me,” I said, as firmly as I could. “I’d like to get past.”

  “What do you know, Elspeth Kent? About the escape?”

  “I don’t know anything,” I said. My heart thumped. Blood rushed to my ears. I knew he didn’t believe me.

  “British all lie,” he snapped. “You lie.” He waved a small scrap of paper in front of me. “This is a secret message. You know it.”

  I took it from him and looked at the writing, and an illustration of a lotus flower, the lettering and symbols swimming about on the page. My head was dizzy; my stomach sick with fear.

  “I’ve never seen it before.”

  He snatched it back from me. “Your friend, the library lady, she passes secret notes around camp, hidden inside her books.”

  “Mrs. Trevellyan? You must be mistaken.”

  “We searched. We found. She will be punished.” He took a step closer so that his nose was almost touching mine. “Your girls help her. I see them, delivering the books.”

  I couldn’t comprehend what he was saying. “No! You’re wrong. The children have nothing to do with it.” Fear and panic swelled within me. “They’re only children!”

  For a moment, I thought he was finished; that he would send me on my way, but he suddenly grabbed my hand.

  “It is time. Teacher.”

  He pulled me into a small shed where he pushed me roughly against the wall. He held one hand against my mouth as he undid the buttons on his trousers. I struggled and grabbed at his arms. I kicked at his shins and tried to scream, but his hand muffled the sound. With his other hand, he pinned my arms against the wall. I was too weak with hunger to fight and struggle for long.

  I shut down. Separating my mind from my body, I peeled myself away from the hard brick wall that pressed painfully into my shoulders, picked up my dignity and the contents of my heart, and ran from that damp, dark room. I didn’t stop running until I’d climbed the camp gates and disappeared into the rice fields where nothing, and nobody, could hurt me.

  Silence was my self-defense; a refusal to give him anything of myself. Not the tremble in my voice. Not the agony of my pain. Silence was my protection, while my mind was a riotous clatter of Psalms and songs, and the ballerina twirling in my music box. I filled my mind with noise so there was no way in for this monster who took more from me in those few frantic moments than a starving farmer ever had. I searched for Harry amid the horror. “He can’t touch your soul, Elspeth,” he whispered. “He can’t touch your heart.”

  Outside, the birds sang in the trees; their gentle beauty so at odds with the brutal violence below, and in the middle of it all, a deeply private part of me wished he had closed the door behind us.

  I don’t know how long it lasted, but with each terrifying, sickening minute, I thought of Connie Hinshaw, and how much worse it would have been for her. I had promised to protect the girls. I had promised to keep them safe.

  A Guide’s honor is to be trusted. A Guide smiles and sings under all difficulties. A Guide is thrifty. A Guide is pure in thought, in word, and in deed.

  And then, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped.

  Relieved of his anger and frustrations, he pushed me to the floor like a discarded rag and stepped outside, as casually as if he’d only been looking for something or other, but couldn’t find it.

  I sat for a while to gather myself; to straighten my clothing and hair. My body shook as I hunched against the wall. I hugged my knees to my chest and stared blankly up at the rafters, at a swallow’s nest, where the mother was brooding her clutch of chicks, and I felt so ashamed to know that she had watched; that she had seen everything. And she wasn’t the only one. As I left the shed, I saw Joan duck behind a tree, from where she watched me walk away.

  When I returned to the dormitory, I told Minnie I was feeling unwell and curled up on my mat in the far corner of the room. I clasped my hands around my knees and lay like a discarded alabaster vase. Empty. Cracked. Irreparable.

  I wrote only a short entry in my diary that week.

  Two inmates escaped.

  Chapter 36

  Nancy

  The rumor that Mrs. T had gone missing spread along the line at breakfast, and was confirmed when Mouse and I went to look for her. I went straight to Edward, hoping he might know something about it.

  “We can’t find her anywhere,” I explained. “The guards have taken all the library books, and she’s disappeared.”

  Edward didn’t say anything for a moment, and then he took my hand and led me toward the sports ground.

  “Look, you might not like to hear this, but I heard that she was involved in the escape. It seems she was hiding coded messages inside the library books.”

  I couldn’t believe it. “But she can’t have been. Not Mrs. T?”

  “It’s very clever when you think about it,” he said. “She’s the last person you would suspect. And to think it was all going on right under the guards’ noses.”

  “But, Edward. We helped her with the library! Me and Mouse. What if we get into trouble, too?”

  He ruffled my hair. “You won’t. As long as you didn’t know anything about it?” He looked suddenly very serious. “You didn’t, did you?”

  “Of course not! Oh, Edward. It’s just awful. Poor Mrs. T.”

  “Clever Mrs. T, more like.”

  “What do you think they’ll do to her?”

  “I wouldn’t worry too much,” he said. “If anyone can handle those guards, Mrs. T can.”

  But I worried terribly. It felt as if all my friends, and everyone I cared about, were being taken away from me. First Mummy, then Sprout and Uncle Eric, and now Mrs. T. Who would leave me next? Tears pricked my eyes as I rushed back to our basement room to find Mouse, and tell her everything Edward had told me. It all came out in a frantic jumble.

  “Do you still have that piece of paper, Mouse?” I whispered. “The one you found in The Thirty-Nine Steps?”

  “No. I gave it back to Mrs. T, the day before the men escaped.”

  We stared at each other, shocked to think that Mrs. T had somehow been involved in the escape.

  “She did seem rather anxious to find that note, didn’t she?” I said. “What if Edward’s right?”

  “I wish I’d thrown it into the stove.” Mouse sighed. “Then maybe she wouldn’t be in trouble.”

  “You don’t think they’ll hurt her, do you? An old woman?”

  Mouse looked at me. “I do, I’m afraid. Remember poor Miss Butterworth?”

  I was even more worried then. “Poor Mrs. T. I can’t bear to think of anyone being cruel to her.”

  “Would you do something about it?” she asked. “If you knew that one of the guards was treating Mrs. T badly? If he was hu
rting her?”

  “I would want to, but what could I do? None of the other guards would care, except Home Run, perhaps. Maybe I’d tell him.”

  Mouse was quiet for a moment. “Yes. Maybe I’ll tell him.”

  “Tell who what?”

  She shook her head and stood up. “It doesn’t matter. I’m talking nonsense. Come on. Let’s ask Miss Kent if we can bring Churchill to our room. He’ll be ever so lonely on his own.”

  Miss Kent agreed that we could bring the bird to our accommodation. “But only until Mrs. Trevellyan returns, which I expect will be very soon.”

  I could tell by the way she said it that she wasn’t sure Mrs. T would come back at all, but at least Churchill had a new home. We put his cage beside the window so that he could see out, although Winnie pointed out that he would only see more bars.

  “It’s like being in a cage, within a cage. The best thing you could do is let him out.”

  “Oh, do be quiet, Winnie,” I snapped. “Don’t you ever have anything positive to say?”

  “I’m only telling the truth.”

  “Well, don’t. The truth isn’t always very helpful.” But her suggestion to let Churchill out of his cage nagged at me, because I’d been thinking the same.

  * * *

  For days we wondered and worried about Mrs. Trevellyan. Even Churchill didn’t sing as much as usual. Mouse said we should ask Home Run if he knew anything, but all he could tell us was that she was being questioned by the commandant.

  “I cannot tell more,” he said.

  “Couldn’t, or wouldn’t,” Mouse said as we trudged wearily back from another awful meal of Same Old Stew. “He might be friendlier than the others, but he’s still on their side.”

  Our questions were partly answered when, a week after the escape and interrogations, Mrs. T returned. Although, she was a very different Mrs. T; a less colorful version of herself.

  Edward and Larry came to find me after lessons to share the news.

  “Your friend is back,” Edward said. “Mrs. T. We’ve just seen her.”