The Orchid Tree (15 page)

You are entering The New Territories. Please drive carefully!
I smiled at the notice. Weren’t you always supposed to drive carefully? But we’d left the city behind and the people who lived here weren’t used to traffic. It was good to get away on my own for once; the constant attention of James, circling around me like a moth, had started to get on my nerves.

The taxi driver slammed on his brakes. A water buffalo had got out of its field and was wandering on the narrow road. We set off again past paddy fields, walled villages, deep valleys, vegetable-plots and fruit orchards. Old women sat winnowing rice in rattan baskets, their wide-brimmed straw hats bobbing up and down. Graves and jars of human bones dotted the steep hillsides, sited with care so
yin
and
yang
were in perfect harmony. Bare-bottomed toddlers at the side of the road waved and called out, ‘Hallo, bye-bye.’

I thought about the children in Stanley. Once, I’d lined them up for their Carol Service; it was our last one in the camp even though we didn’t know it then. I’d gazed fondly at the Japanese man conducting. The Reverend Kiyoshi Watanabe had been our latest interpreter and a more sympathetic man than any we’d had previously.

A Lutheran minister, he’d studied at the Gettysburg Seminary in the United States, where he’d been given the name John. The children in the camp called him Uncle John. The infants had sung,
away in a manger, no crib for a bed
, and I’d joined in. Uncle John then launched into a rendition of
Holy Night
in Japanese, his tone strong and true. Yet, in the audience, a number of people had talked loudly and spoilt his performance. Papa told me only the other day he’d heard that Uncle John’s wife and daughter had been vaporized by the Hiroshima atomic bomb. So much suffering . . .

The gates of the Children’s Home, as it was called, rose up. A formidable-looking European woman was striding down the drive, mud-coloured hair a mass of frizz, and steel-grey eyes framed by tortoiseshell glasses.

I held out my hand to the woman I’d heard so much about: Miss Denning. A missionary sent to Hong Kong in the early 1930s, I recalled, Miss Denning had been struck by the plight of hundreds of babies abandoned as a result of poverty and superstition. With support from local missionaries, she’d started the orphanage and had managed to keep going through charitable donations. During the war, she and her helpers had suffered violence, starvation, dysentery and recurrent malaria, but they’d refused to abandon their charges. I felt a rush of admiration.

‘You’ll find we’re like a family,’ Miss Denning said. ‘The children call me Mum and our main aim is to love them as if they’re truly ours. You’re a teacher, I believe?’ Without waiting for a reply, Miss Denning continued. ‘Excellent. You can help the children with their reading. We all speak English with them and we teach them in English. If you can promise to come every Sunday, that will be perfect. We have a team of volunteers during the week, but no one on Sundays.’

The building had been converted from an old police station. Miss Denning showed me around the ground floor dining room, children’s dormitories, and staff sitting room. Upstairs was another sitting room, a kitchen, bathroom, dispensary, sick room and a superintendent’s bedroom.

Miss Denning pointed through the window to a smaller building at the back. ‘That’s for me and Mary Williams, my right-hand-lady. Oh, and the amahs.’

Downstairs, we traipsed into the schoolroom built by the side of the block. Rows of faces looked up at us, straight black hair and cheeky grins. The vast majority of them were girls. Girl babies were of less value in Chinese culture and therefore more likely to be abandoned. My heart swelled with sympathy for them. If only I could adopt them all . . .

Another European woman, with mousey brown hair cut in a severe bob, came forward. I shook hands with Miss Williams. Miss Denning’s “right-hand-lady” promptly put me to work. I sat on a stool, surrounded by the infants, and flipped open
The Three Little Pigs.
I felt a tug at my sleeve. A girl nestled by my side: wide eyes, small mouth and pointed chin. ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Mei Ling,’ the child whispered, shyly. She clambered onto my lap and told me she was five years old. I stroked her soft round cheek and hugged her. Then I stared over Mei Ling’s shoulder at the far wall and thought about Papa. He visited Mama’s grave every Sunday, but I hadn’t been able to face going with him. I’d managed to keep my memories of Stanley sealed away; working at the orphanage would be the perfect pretext not to return.

***

At home that evening, the telephone rang and I picked up the receiver. It would be James. He usually called me at this time on a Sunday, to suggest meeting up for dinner mid-week.

‘It’s Chun Ming here,’ a familiar voice said.

‘Jimmy!’ He’d given his Chinese name. ‘What a surprise! Where are you?’

‘I’ve just arrived and I have a job teaching English at the Chinese school in Waterloo Road.’ It was one of the many communist schools the Government allowed to operate, just like they turned a blind eye to the news agency, communist newspapers, and other such organisations that were springing up all over the colony.

‘It’s wonderful you’re back. What a coincidence we’ve both become teachers!’

‘May I please speak with my mother?’ Jimmy’s voice was stiff and unfriendly, not like my Chinese brother at all.

I rang the hand bell on the table in front of me and sent the houseman to fetch Ah Ho. She talked at length with her son. Pretending not to listen, I picked up a magazine and flicked through the pages, my heart crumpling with every word.

‘
Aiyah!’
Ah Ho put down the receiver. ‘Ah Chun got married. He want me go live in his flat in Mong Kok. He say no good his mama work as amah. Say very bad face for him.’

I embraced Ah Ho. ‘How are we going to manage without you?’ I stepped back. ‘I’m sorry. Of course you must go and be with Jimmy. I’m just being selfish.’

***

Jimmy came to collect his mother a week later. He arrived with his wife, Li, and they sat on the sofa, their backs straight. I poured them tea. Ah Ho, even though invited, had refused to take her place next to them.

I held out a plate of cucumber sandwiches. ‘Tell me what you’ve been doing since I last saw you,’ I said to Jimmy.

‘I struggled with myself for many months when I went back to China after the British surrendered.’ He paused, bit into his sandwich, chewed, then swallowed. ‘I joined the guerrillas and we had to fight in secret. I’d seen the corruption of the Kuomintang. They made me sick.’ He sipped his tea. ‘Now the revolution has triumphed and, because of my knowledge of Hong Kong, I’ve been sent here to live among the running dogs of imperialism. It is a great sacrifice, but I’m willing to make it for my country.’

How zealous he sounds!

‘Please allow your mother to visit often.’

Jimmy smiled his crooked-teeth smile and, for a couple of seconds, I caught a glimpse of my childhood friend. ‘That will be acceptable,’ he said.

‘We want to give her a monthly pension. It’s the least we can do.’

‘I think she will appreciate your consideration.’

Later, her paltry luggage loaded into the car Papa had organised to take her to Jimmy’s flat, Ah Ho stood sobbing in front of the house. Earlier, she’d told me she didn’t want to leave but had to do her duty to her son.

I kissed my amah’s wrinkled cheek. ‘I’m going to miss you and I want you to know that, if ever you need anything, you only have to call me.’

Ah Ho waved from the back seat as the car drove out the gates. I wiped my tears. Li had hardly spoken a word to me; she seemed such a quiet person. If only I could have broken through the barrier that seemed to have risen between me and Jimmy, but he’d seemed not to have even noticed I still wore the jade bangle he and Ah Ho had given me. I doubted he’d kept my book.

I remembered the games of hopscotch on the path to the tennis courts, the walks around the Peak, my parties when he’d always been included at my insistence. At the time of the Mid-Autumn Festival, Mama and Papa used to let me stay up late with Ah Ho and Jimmy to watch the moon and eat moon cakes. Ah Ho’s English was even more limited then and she called the festival “the Moon’s Birthday”. We had lanterns and mine was always shaped like a horse and Jimmy’s like a goldfish and I would play hide and seek with him in the dark. Those days would live on in my memory, but Jimmy almost certainly never thought back to his time on the Peak. He was so wrapped up in revolutionary zeal he’d probably blocked it from his mind.

I went up to my bedroom and sat at my dressing table. I’d finally lost that gaunt look I’d had since Stanley. My cheeks had rounded out and my breasts were more distinct. Charles would hardly recognise me if he saw me again. Only Charles would never see me again. Charles was dead.

I thought about Jimmy, fired with enthusiasm for his cause. I needed a cause myself. Something I could believe in. Something to lift me out of this dreadful despondency and give me a reason to get on with my life.

Charles was pacing the forward deck of the
SS Canton
in the warmth of a late summer dawn. He’d been up here for the past hour and the ship had just passed the lights of a sampan or, possibly, a junk. He was back. At last.

Feeling in his pocket, he crumpled the well-worn draft of the letter he’d sent to Kate nearly four years ago.

27, Groombridge Road

Hackney, London E9

1
st
December 1945

Dearest Kate

I miss you so much, and the past eighteen months have been such hell, looking up and seeing you on that balcony, your beautiful face, and not being able to hold you in my arms and tell you how much I love you, then not being able to see you. Oh, how I’ve wanted to feel your sweet lips on mine and stroke your soft, warm cheek. There hasn’t been a minute of every day when I haven’t thought about you, my darling.

You must be wondering what happened to me. As you know, I was due to be drafted to Japan. After an overnight stay at a camp near the airport, the guards loaded us onto lorries that took us to Holden’s Wharf, but there was an air-raid and pandemonium broke out. Bombs were flying everywhere and the Japs ran for cover. Everyone else was frozen with fear, but I took the opportunity to make a dash for it. And thank God I did as so many died on that ship. Such a terrible tragedy!

Did you know the communist guerrillas rescued Allied soldiers who escaped from camps? They also picked up almost all of the shot-down American pilots. One of the guerrillas was shadowing our lorry, and took me straight to a safe house in Sai Kung. I was scared out of my mind. They kept me there for a fortnight until I’d recovered my strength enough to carry on. I’ll never forget those fisher people: they shared their meagre food with me and I can’t tell you what a difference it made. When I got there, I could hardly walk, I was so weak, and all I could think of was holding you again.

One night, I was told to get ready to leave. Someone found me a Chinese peasant outfit, you know the sort of thing - baggy black cotton trousers and a black padded tunic. I expect I looked more local than ever and my Cantonese was good enough to fake it if we met any Japs. We set off by sampan under cover of darkness as if we were going fishing.

I had been entrusted to a sixteen-year-old. Can you imagine? Except he was the fiercest sixteen-year-old I’ve ever met. His name was Fei, and he’d left school at thirteen because there were Japs to fight. He’d been with the guerrillas for nearly a year and boasted six kills. He said they took few prisoners on either side. “When the Japanese catch one of our men, do you know what they do?” he asked me. “They press lighted cigarettes all over his face and kill him slowly. When we take one of them we cut off his head immediately.” I just hope the same thing happens to those sadists who murdered Bob and the others. Ruth told me all about what you both saw. It must have been terrifying for you, my love. Makes me feel ill to think that you witnessed such horror.

We landed on the other side of Mirs Bay and I thought we’d arrived at a ghost village. Completely silent. No dogs barking, no chickens clucking. We could see vegetable plots stretching up towards the darkness of the mountains behind. Bit by bit, figures came out from behind the bushes and soon we were surrounded by villagers and insurgents. They gave us condensed milk and biscuits before we started marching up the valley towards unoccupied China. We spent the night at a stronghold of the anti-Japanese resistance, in a village house together with the family’s livestock.

After a breakfast of sweet cakes we marched along the raised paths through the paddy fields. We stopped to catch our breath at several villages, and were given tea and steamed buns by the women, whose men were all off fighting the Japanese. As in most of China, the only communication lines were the ribbon-like footways we were walking on, made up of low walls of mud running from one rice field to the next.

We were in smugglers’ territory and climbed up wide steps, hidden under a canopy of overhanging trees and shrubs. The great flat stones had been worn smooth by the passage of thousands of padding feet, carrying merchandise unloaded from junks on the coast. At the top of the steps we had our last view of Hong Kong – a distant peak on the west coast of the bay. I thought about you, Kate, stuck in Stanley, and I prayed it would not be long before we could be together again.

On the fourth day we reached Waichow. Fei took me to the Seventh Day Adventist Mission, which overlooked the East River and the mountains beyond. It was a haven of tranquillity, with lawns shaded by old trees, flower gardens and a lake. I stayed with the pastor and enjoyed the luxury of a bath and a shave, wishing with all my heart that you could have been there with me, you would have adored the place, Kate.

Having done his duty, Fei said goodbye. I was sad to see him go as I’d grown used to his cheerful company and had felt safe with someone who had six Japs under his belt. From then onwards, I was in the hands of the BAAG, the British Army Aid Group, which was the resistance movement we were in touch with in the camp. Shortly after Chinese New Year we were evacuated upriver and, a few months later, sent farther north again, as the enemy was on the move.

When the Japs surrendered, I was able to make my way back to Hong Kong and found out I’d missed your departure by one day. One day! Can you believe that? Desperate, I went to your house on the Peak, but it was almost in ruins and there was no one around. I couldn’t find anyone who knew how to get in touch with you. But I expect the house will be renovated and I just hope someone will forward this letter.

Darling Kate, if you get this, please write to the above address. I long for your news and to know you still love me as I love you.

Yours,

Charles xxx

Why hadn’t Kate answered his letters? He’d written to her every month for nearly a year. Perhaps she’d had second thoughts and had decided not to answer. No, that couldn’t be. They’d been so close, so in love. He knew Kate and he knew she’d never forget him. The only explanation could be that his letters hadn’t got through to her. Simple as that. She was probably still in Australia and, as soon as she returned to Hong Kong and found out he was here, she’d get in touch with him. He couldn’t wait to see her dear, darling face again and to feel her in his arms.

He’d enjoyed the month-long voyage from Southampton, once he’d got over the initial sea sickness and the wrench of saying goodbye to his family. His cabin was air-conditioned and his fellow-passengers friendly. Especially the young, single women making their way out to the colony to stay with friends and relations and, possibly, meet someone to marry. They wouldn’t consider him a suitable catch as he was half-Chinese, he knew, but that hadn’t prevented them from flirting with him. He’d got used to flirting with girls and keeping them at arm’s length. Kate was the only one for him.

At Port Said an Egyptian, or
gully-gully man
as everyone called him, came on board and delighted people with his antics. Dressed in a long white robe and brown sandals, the man had waved his magician’s wand and conjured up live baby chicks from behind the children’s ears.

A first class passenger, Charles had to dress formally for dinner - except the first night and nights in port. He’d enjoyed the deck quoits, dancing, and a peculiar ceremony when they crossed the Equator, with first-timers having to give a present to King Neptune. Luckily, he didn’t qualify; he’d already gone through that on his voyage out to England.

The farther east they’d sailed, the closer he’d felt to his roots. There’d been some spectacular sunsets over the Indian Ocean. In Colombo he went ashore and bought tiny wooden carved elephants; they’d make useful presents. Singapore reminded him of a quieter, cleaner Hong Kong and he’d relished hearing Cantonese in the shops.

Now, the dull drone of the turbines and the song of the wind were in his ears. The sky was lightening and the shadowy shape of islands came into sight. Ships, and freighters, and barges, and Hong Kong Island rose out of the gloom. Other people emerged on deck and Charles greeted them with a smile. Tugboats guided the
SS Canton
towards Holden’s Wharf through the melee of water craft thronging the harbour.

He stood at the railings and eyed the crowd gathered on the quay. There were Uncle Phillip and Auntie Julie! He waved frantically until they returned his greeting.

Disembarkation formalities completed, he ran down the gangway and they threw their arms around him. Auntie kissed his cheek. ‘Welcome home.’

Soon afterwards Charles was sitting in their spacious sitting room. Peking carpets covered the waxed parquet flooring, and the antique lacquer chests and jade screens he remembered were in their usual places. The last time he’d been here, they were still in storage. ‘It hardly seems any different.’

‘We’ve redecorated it to be the same as before the war.’ Uncle Phillip rubbed his brow. ‘As you know, we managed to hide our choice pieces in an out-of-the-way warehouse.’

Uncle, whose real estate business was flourishing after he’d made some wise investments, had arranged a job for Charles at Beacons law firm.

‘It’s very kind of you to help me,’ he said, touching Uncle’s shoulder.

Auntie poured tea. ‘How is your mother?’

Charles smiled at his aunt. Her resemblance to Ma was uncanny. It would be years before he’d see his family again, but he didn’t regret his decision to return to Hong Kong. He’d been a stranger in England. It had been a struggle to adapt at first, but thanks to his paternal uncle’s generosity they hadn’t wanted for anything. Initially they’d lived in the East End, but they’d moved to Chelsea after the war and Pa had started his own business dealing in Chinese antiques.

‘Ma is well and so are Pa and Ruth,’ he said to Aunt Julie. She was still childless after many years of marriage, and he knew she considered Ruth and him almost like her own children.

‘You’ll find Hong Kong is changing.’ Uncle offered him a cigarette.

‘Thanks, but I don’t smoke. Please tell me about the changes.’

‘Masses of people are pouring over the border because of the troubles in China. I’m a member of a
Kaifong
Association and we’re doing our best to provide free education and health care.’

‘Where do all the refugees live?’

‘Most of them are in squatter huts on the hillsides. The rest are on rooftops, in alleyways, anywhere they can find.’

Auntie wagged a finger. ‘I think the Government needs to wake up to its responsibilities and send them back to China.’

‘These poor people must have good reason to abandon their homes, sever their family ties, and renounce their traditional allegiances to come here.’ Uncle smiled indulgently. ‘We have to accept them in the name of humanity.’

After lunch, Charles went to his room to unpack. But the amahs had got there before him and all his clothes had been tidied away, his books placed in neat piles on the chest of drawers. He’d have to get used to a house full of servants again and there would be many other changes he’d have to deal with. Returning to his roots had been the second goal that kept him focused while he’d been away. The first goal, of course, was that he’d see Kate again and rekindle their love.

***

Charles crossed the harbour on the Ferry the next morning, and walked the short distance to Alexandra House. The Star Ferry was still just the “Ferry” - some things didn’t change.

The union flag flew from the domed cupola on top of an elegant four-storey building perched on portico arcades up ahead. It was as familiar to Charles as a pair of old shoes. But the roads were even more crowded than he remembered: tramcars, buses, taxis, bicycles and rickshaws all vying for space with private cars in the rubbish-strewn streets. People scurried between the vehicles and the noise was thunderous: horns hooting, trams jangling, bells ringing, people shouting. Charles inhaled the petrol fumes, the smell of wok oil and the stink of humanity living cheek by jowl and let out a happy sigh. He’d truly come home.

His office was on the fifth floor and he rode up in an antiquated bird cage lift, to be met by his secretary, Mabel, a Portuguese Eurasian, plump and middle-aged. The Cantonese office boy, a relation to one of Uncle Phillip’s messengers, busied himself reading the paper and providing endless cups of tea. Charles and his secretary got on with the correspondence, the ordering of business cards and the like. His workmates seemed friendly, a mix of British, Eurasians and Chinese solicitors. The barriers had never been there when it came to business.

At lunchtime Charles strolled down Queen’s Road. On his right loomed the granite-faced fortress of The Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. A pair of polished bronze lions guarded the door, symbolising the financial stability of the colony. He patted the lions like everyone else, for luck. He had it on good authority the building possessed excellent
feng
shui
; the life-force of the dragon of the mountain flowed down from the Peak to the harbour via its premises, bringing wealth and prosperity to all who banked there.

He glanced across the road and caught sight of the back of a tall lady with long, wavy dark-brown hair getting onto a tram. Could it be Kate? His heart quickened, but he was too late to catch up with her. If it had been her. The tram was already clanking its way towards Wanchai.