of a future full of possibility.
Aside from Joan, Nancy and Dorothy, Winnie, Agnes and Elsie were also present. Alice, Mary and Barbara had returned to their parents in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Bunty Browne had left for Australia only two days ago to rendezvous with her parents, who were already on furlough. I wondered how significant those last-minute decisions, and my own indecision, would prove to be. With the children’s parents dispersed all over China, reuniting them would be challenging, if not impossible. If I’d once felt uncertain about making an impromptu wharf-side promise to Lillian Plummer to keep a special eye on Nancy, I wondered what on earth that promise might mean now. Wherever Lillian Plummer was, I could feel her, urging me to keep my word; to keep watch over her daughter.
As the seriousness of the announcement began to sink in, the children turned to each other, wide-eyed. Some were upset, while others were excited to finally find themselves part of the war they had read and heard so much about. Some of the boys practised their rat-a-tat-a machine-gun noises as the rising drone of speculation and conjecture filled the room.
‘You don’t think Japanese soldiers will occupy the school, do you?’ Minnie whispered, voicing my own fears. ‘What if they come roaring through the gates in their awful trucks and fly their flag over the cricket pitch? I can’t stop thinking about Nanking.’
Neither could I.
The atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese army in Nanking had preceded my arrival in China, but the horrific massacre of thousands of Chinese civilians was so shocking it had left a deep and painful scar. I knew that many of the school’s servants had seen family and loved ones brutally murdered, many women enduring the very worst indignity at the hands of the soldiers. The word rape was too ugly to speak out loud, but it had certainly occupied my thoughts whenever I’d seen the soldiers beyond the school gates, and it troubled me greatly now. While none of us wanted to think about the possibility of the horrors of Nanking ever happening again, the question on all our lips was not if soldiers would arrive at the school, but when. I hoped Minnie hadn’t noticed the tremble in my hand.
‘Well, let’s hope for the best,’ Minnie continued. ‘I’m quite sure a western missionary school won’t be of any interest to them, and children have a wonderful capacity for bringing out compassion in people, don’t they? Besides, the British Navy will be on top of things. They’ll send a warship to evacuate us and we’ll be repatriated and tucking into goose and all the trimmings before you can say “Merry Christmas, Mister Scrooge.” I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they weren’t already en route.’
It was typical of Minnie to look on the bright side. Not for the first time, I found her optimism rather naïve and misplaced and I had to bite my tongue to prevent myself saying something unkind as an awful sense of dread settled in my stomach. It was the same feeling I’d woken up with on the morning of my wedding day.
In the end, calling it off was the easiest decision I’d ever made. The sun had just risen, spiderwebs draped across the hedgerows like lace veils as I’d walked up the lane to Reggie’s mother’s house and calmly explained that I couldn’t marry him after all. He wasn’t surprised. He knew he wasn’t the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. That man, Harry Evans, was buried beneath the collapsed mine he’d worked in all his adult life, and the vibrant young woman who should have married him and lived a quiet life with our children asleep in their beds and washing dancing on the line, had been buried with him.
‘God save the King,’ Minnie whispered as the broadcast came to an end.
My fingertips brushed against the envelope in my pocket. It is with much difficulty, and after a great deal of personal anguish and reflection, that I must inform you of my intention to leave my position at Chefoo School and return to my family in England … I imagined my words slipping from the page, unwritten, unseen, irrelevant now.
‘God save us all, Minnie,’ I replied. ‘God save us all.’
Immediately after assembly, we were called to an emergency meeting in the staff room.
‘I will assess the local and international situation with Mission HQ and await further instruction,’ our headmaster explained. ‘We have one hundred and twenty-four children in our care, comprising ninety British, three Canadians, five Australians, two South Africans, eighteen Americans, three Norwegians and three Dutch. The preservation of the children’s faith, safety and education must be our utmost priority until assistance arrives, and, in the meantime, it’s business as usual.’
Everything else, including my plans to return to England, would simply have to wait.
After the short meeting, we returned to our respective classrooms.
I smoothed any signs of worry from my face and walked the eleven steps to the front of the classroom, just as I had yesterday, and the many hundreds of days before that. I tapped my metre rule three times against the desk, and cleared my throat, twice. Routine and discipline sustained me in many ways, but especially on days like this.
The simmering noise of the girls’ chatter fell away as they stood behind their desks, the scraping of chair legs against the floor setting my teeth on edge.
‘Good morning, class,’ I announced.
‘Good morning, Miss Kent.’
Like a well-rehearsed song, there was a distinct harmony and tone to the exchange, but the girls’ response that morning was understandably sombre.
‘Hands together for prayers.’
When the children had closed their eyes tight, and I was certain nobody was peeping, I crumpled Emperor Hirohito’s declaration into a ball and tossed it into the wastepaper basket beneath my desk. I placed my resignation letter inside the China Inland Mission Bible in my drawer. The pages fell open at Joshua 10:25. Joshua said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Be strong and courageous.’ Not for the first time, I wished the words meant more to me than they did.
I joined the girls in prayer, focusing on the singular truth I’d clung to all these uncertain years: that every decision I made, whether right or wrong, whether people criticized or admired me for my choices, took me closer to the place, and the person, I was meant to be. As the girls’ bright voices filled the classroom, I closed my eyes and absorbed the simple familiarity of the moment: chalk dust on my fingertips, the pool of winter sunlight against my cheek, the sounds of singing and instruction drifting along the corridors. Routine and discipline. The glue holding me together while the world was falling apart.
We were halfway through the Lord’s Prayer when the soldiers arrived.
Our prayer puttered to a stop, and the classroom fell silent.
I opened my eyes and reached up onto my tiptoes to see what all the commotion was beyond the snow-speckled windows: the loud rumble of trucks, raised voices, doors slamming.
Miss Kent followed my gaze, all the colour having drained from her face. For a moment, the world seemed to stop, unsure of what to do with us next, until Miss Kent clapped her hands and cleared her throat.
‘Face the front, children,’ she instructed. ‘It appears our new rulers have arrived. But that’s no excuse for incomplete prayers. Start again, please. Our Father …’
But another loud noise outside pulled
