The Orchid Tree (24 page)
Authors: Siobhan Daiko
Siobhan Daiko was born in Hong Kong, educated in Perth, Western Australia, and moved to the UK in 1981. She has worked in the City of London, once ran a post office/B &B in Herefordshire, and, more recently, taught Modern Foreign Languages in a Welsh high school. Siobhan now lives with her husband in the Veneto region of Northern Italy, where she spends her time writing, researching historical characters, and enjoying the
dolce vita.
The Orchid Tree
is her second novel to be published.
I would like to thank the following people:
Members and professional reviewers of YouWriteOn, the peer review site, for their feedback on the early chapters.
Ann Bennett, Tony Fyler, Safia Moore and Judith Ozkan, my talented fellow writers, for their helpful comments on early drafts.
John Hudspith, my inspiring editor, for his highly professional, prompt, and precise editing.
Jane Dixon-Smith for her wonderful work on the cover design.
My family: my late parents and grandparents, Veronica, Douglas, Doris and Vernon, whose lives inspired this novel; my brother, Diarmuid, and my sister, Clodagh, for their encouragement.
Victor, my husband, for his love and support. Our son, Paul, and his girlfriend, Lili, for their help with technology.
Last, but not least, I thank you, my reader, for buying this book and reading it.
I was privileged to have grown up in Hong Kong during the post-war era, and I hope that my personal experience of a time and place which no longer exist has lent an authenticity to my writing.
The Orchid
Tree is, however, a work of fiction. All of the characters are products of my imagination. My mother had an amah, Ah Ho, who looked after me when I was a child; I loved her dearly, but the Ah Ho of my novel is simply inspired by her.
My grandparents, Doris and Vernon Walker, were interned in Stanley. I remember my grandmother telling me Ah Ho’s first words to her on liberation, which I have used in
The Orchid Tree
. Gran and Grandpa didn’t like to talk about their harrowing time in the camp. Like Flora with Henry, Doris was caught nursing Vernon during a bout of TB when the Japanese attacked. My mother, Veronica, had been evacuated to Australia. From the age of 14 to 18 she learnt to cope without her parents, an experience which affected her for the rest of her life.
When my grandparents were finally liberated, they were so thin they resembled walking skeletons, and both died relatively young due to post-starvation-related illnesses. Their lives were similar to Henry and Flora’s, in that they lived on the Peak in a house with nine servants and shared some of the colonial attitudes of my expatriate characters, however that’s as far as the similarities go.
Family stories did inspire parts of
The Orchid Tree
. My father, Douglas Bland, was an officer in The Chinese Maritime Customs from 1946 to 1948, making charts and chasing smugglers up and down the South China Coast. He told me of an incident when a young man had been tied to a junk, and also about a bribery attempt. James and Sofia’s story is not that of my parents, however. Dad was a businessman and a prominent Hong Kong artist; I have used one of his paintings on this book cover.
Mum was a teacher like Kate, and shared some of her physical characteristics, but that’s all. I wanted to take a girl from my mother’s background, and have her fall in love with a man whom my grandparents would have considered unsuitable. Hong Kong today is a different place to the old colony, and mixed-marriages have become commonplace. I like to think Kate and Charles would have been at the forefront of that change.
As I said, this is not a family history; it’s a romance. All the locations in my story are real, however, as are the events which took place in Stanley. I have used George Wright Nooth’s involvement with smuggling chocolate fortified with vitamins into the prison as a reason for Charles to fall under the suspicion of the Japanese.
A ship,
Lisbon Maru
, taking POWs to Japan was sunk by the Americans, but that happened in 1942 not 1945. I have also taken the liberty of bringing forward in time the violence in Tsuen Wan, caused by escalating tensions between pro-Nationalist and pro-Communist factions. There wasn’t a Typhoon Wendy in Hong Kong in 1949; I have based my typhoon on the notorious Typhoon Wanda.
The Children’s Home is inspired by Miss Dibden’s Shatin Babies’ Home. James’ hapless dragon boat race is taken from the first competition between expatriates and locals, recounted by Denis Bray. James and Sofia’s dinner on the floating restaurant was inspired by the one in
A Many Splendoured Thing.
And K C Leung’s attempt to steal Leo’s gold was based on the world’s first air piracy, an attempted skyjack that went disastrously wrong in Hong Kong on 16
th
July 1948.
With respect to the spelling of Chinese names, I’ve used the orthography that was current in the 1940s. My title,
The Orchid Tree
, not only is a feature of the novel, but also another name for the
Bauhinia blakeana
, which originated in Hong Kong. Since the handover of the ex-colony to China in 1997, the flower has appeared on the territory’s flag and coins. The place of my birth, Hong Kong will forever be my home.
The following books have provided me with inspiration and information:
Alan Birch &Martin Cole,
Captive Christmas
Martin Booth,
Golden Boy
Denis Bray,
Hong Kong Metamorphosis
Christopher Briggs,
The Sea Gate
Jean Gittins
, Stanley: Behind Barbed Wire
Vicky Lee,
Being Eurasian
Tim Luard,
Escape from Hong Kong
F.D. Ommanney,
Fragrant Harbour
Gwen Priestwood,
Through Japanese Barbed Wire
Han Suyin,
A Many Splendoured Thing
George WrightNooth,
Prisoner of the Turnip Heads
I hope you have enjoyed reading
The Orchid Tree
as much as I enjoyed writing it. Your feedback is important to me and I would love to know what you thought of Kate, Charles, Sofia and James. I’ll keep an eye out for reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, or you can drop me a line by email. Please follow
http://fragrantpublishing.com/
for updates. I’m currently working on the story of a 16
th
Century Venetian courtesan and my first novel to be published,
Lady of Asolo,
is available on Amazon. I have written a short story,
Fragrant Haven
, about how James joins the Customs Service.
I blog about writing and my life of romance and adventure in Hong Kong and Italy at
http://siobhandaiko.wordpress.com/
I’d love you to visit
The Orchid Tree’s
Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/theOrchidTree1
and website
http://theorchidtree.com/
You can connect with me on Twitter @siobhandaiko or by email [email protected].
We can’t change the past, but the past can change us
‘I lived and breathed this book. Highly recommended,’
RENITA D’SILVA, author of
Monsoon Memories.
After losing her fiancé in a horrific disaster, Fern visits Italy to find solace and indulge her love of painting, but her dreadful dreams of fiery death transform into reality when she hears ghostly whispers and catches sight of a piece of burnt wood, which mysteriously appears then disappears.
Luca, a local architect, comes to her aid at Asolo Castle, when her mind is seemingly taken over by Cecilia, a young woman at the court of Queen Caterina Cornaro five hundred years ago.
As episode follows episode and Fern sees the world increasingly through Cecilia’s eyes, Cecilia begins a passionate affair with the artist, Zorzo, and echoes of the past manifest themselves in the present through a series of startling coincidences until past and present collide, throwing both Fern and Cecilia into mortal peril.
Can Luca keep Fern out of danger and help her come to terms with her own past?
From the Sovereign Lady of Asolo’s villa of delights to the palaces of 16
th
Century Venice, Siobhan Daiko’s novel will take you on a sensuous and fragrant journey of intrigue, romance and redemption.
*
James Battles typhoon and treachery to find his fragrant haven.
You can download your copy
here
.