But we didn’t forget.
Those years clung to us like a midday shadow, waiting to trip us up when we least expected it: a remembered song, a familiar scent, a name overheard in a shop, and there we were in an instant, wilting in the stifling heat during roll-call, kept awake at night by the ache of unimaginable hunger. I suppose it was inevitable that we would talk about it in the end; that we would tell the story of our war.
I’m still surprised by how much I have to say; how much I remember. I’d assumed I would only recall odd scraps and incoherent fragments, but it has all become clearer despite being ignored; the memories sharpened by distance and time. Now, when I talk about my school years in China, people only want to hear the parts about occupation and internment. That’s the story everyone wants me to tell; how terrible it was and how frightened we were. But I also remember the smaller, simpler moments of a young girl’s school days: smudged ink on fingertips, disinfectant in the corridors, hopscotch squares and skipping games, the iridescent wings of a butterfly that danced through the classroom window one autumn morning and settled on the back of my hand. I want to tell that side of my story, too.
Perhaps part of me wishes I could go back to the time before; that I could appreciate those quiet, inconsequential days before everything changed: giggling into our hands when Miss Kent’s back was turned, grumbling to Sprout about lumpy porridge, turning cartwheels with Mouse on the golden sands of the bay, exchanging secret whispers in the pitch dark of the dorm. Unprepared for what lay ahead, we clattered thoughtlessly on through the careful precision of school routine – breakfast and prayers, assembly and lessons, tiffin and supper, Sibling Saturday and Empire Day – wildly ignorant of our privileges; and of how much we were about to lose.
Our war arrived quietly, two weeks before Christmas, settling over the terracotta roof tiles of Chefoo School with the first of the season’s snow. Safe in our beds, over one hundred boys and girls slept soundly, oblivious to the events happening at Pearl Harbor over five thousand miles away; unaware that the ripples of conflict were racing across the Pacific toward us.
I was ten years old that winter. Brownie Guides was my favourite part of the school week, and my feet still couldn’t quite reach the floor when I sat on the edge of my bed …
Chefoo, Shantung Province, China
1941–1943
THE GUIDE LAW: A GUIDE IS LOYAL
This does not mean that she thinks her friends and family and school are perfect; far from it. But there is a way of standing up for what is dear to you, even though you admit that it has its faults.
China Inland Mission School, Chefoo, December 1941
‘We’ve been contacted by your parents, Nancy,’ Miss Kent said, arms folded across her rose-pink cardigan as she stood beside the window. ‘I’m afraid you won’t be spending the Christmas holidays with them after all.’
Her words seemed to echo off the wood-panelled walls of the principal’s office – a small suffocating room that smelled of linseed oil and bad news – so that I heard them again and again. You won’t be spending the Christmas holidays with them after all. I wanted to cover my ears. I didn’t want it to be true.
I stood in the middle of an Oriental rug, the pattern worn away by years of children coming and going to receive bad news, or the sharp end of the principal’s tongue. I looked up at my teacher, and couldn’t think of one word to say.
‘Your mother sent a letter each for you and Edward,’ Miss Kent continued. She held out an envelope, addressed to me in my mother’s elegant handwriting. I stared at it. ‘Well?’ she prompted. ‘It won’t read itself.’
Reluctantly, I took the envelope, opened it, and removed the letter. The scent of English lavender bloomed around me as I read.
I’m so desperately sorry to disappoint you again, Nonny, but your father insists it’s too dangerous for us to travel with the Chinese and Japanese armies still fighting. Besides, the roads are in a desperate state after the recent landslides. You should have seen the rain! I’m sure you’ll have wonderful fun with your friends. I can’t wait to see you, darling. How you must have grown!
I imagined Mummy at her writing desk, the sun on her face, her pen poised in mid-air as she composed the next sentence. I imagined her more often than I saw her.
Since starting my first term at the school two years earlier, my parents’ missionary work had taken them from the China Inland Mission compound at the International Settlement in Shanghai all the way to Ch’ing-hai Province on the other side of the country. Hard winters, landslides and the Sino-Japanese war had, in turns, prevented them from travelling back to Chefoo; back to me.
Seeing my eyes fill with tears, Miss Kent offered an encouraging, ‘Come along now. Chin up.’ She studied me through her round wire spectacles. The grey eyes that peered at me, often so serious, carried a hint of an apology, as if she somehow felt it were her fault that I would spend another Christmas away from my parents. ‘Better to be safe than sorry,’ she concluded. ‘And think about all the displaced Chinese children and refugees who are benefitting from your parents’ missionary work.’ She gave a little smile. ‘And at least Dorothy and Joan – or should I say, “Sprout and Mouse” – are staying, too, so that’s something, isn’t it?’
She hadn’t used my friends’ nicknames before. I suppose she did it to make me feel better.
I held the sheet of writing paper to my nose. ‘It smells of her,’ I whispered. ‘Of lavender. Her favourite.’ I tucked the letter into my pinafore pocket and wiped a tear from my cheek. ‘She likes the smell of sweet peas, too. And roses. She doesn’t care for lily-of-the-valley though. It makes her sneeze.’ My mother had become a collection of such memories; scraps and fragments I rummaged through. ‘I really did want to see her, Miss. Ever so much.’ I pushed my hands into my pockets. ‘It isn’t fair.’
I hadn’t meant to say the words out loud. Self-pity was not a trait to be admired, and homesickness was considered ‘sentimental nonsense’. We were often reminded how disappointed our parents would be to learn that we were thinking only of ourselves, but still, it was unfair that I couldn’t see Mummy, and I didn’t care that I’d said so.
Miss Kent asked me to join her at the window. We stood for a moment, side by side in silence. I wondered if she might place a comforting arm around my shoulder, but she kept her arms folded and looked straight ahead.
‘What do you see outside?’ she asked.
I reached up onto my tiptoes. Beyond the window, several school servants, dressed in their uniforms of cropped black trousers and a white blouse with knotted buttons, were busy with various tasks. ‘I can see Shu Lan carrying a basket of laundry. And Wei Huan, with a rake and broom …’ I trailed off as we watched them work.
Wei Huan, one of the school gardeners, had helped us with our Gardener badge for Brownies that summer. He called us his ‘Little Flowers’. Shu Lan was less friendly and wasn’t very popular among the girls as a result. If we interrupted her before she’d finished tidying our dorm, she would shoo us away with her hands, and mutter things at us in Chinese.
‘Perhaps it isn’t fair that Shu Lan has to carry that heavy basket, full of our dirty bedsheets,’ Miss Kent said. ‘Or perhaps it isn’t fair for Wei Huan to sweep up the leaves that