would say when he heard the school had been overrun by ‘the Japs’ as he called them. He certainly didn’t have anything nice to say about them whenever I’d heard him discussing the Sino-Japanese war with Edward.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that we shouldn’t even have been at the school when war and the soldiers arrived. We should have been with our parents, wrapping Christmas gifts and singing carols. It made it all seem so much worse.
The morning dragged on. We waited for hours in the cold assembly hall and still the headmaster didn’t come to tell us it had all been a mistake and we could return to our classrooms and carry on as normal. Several of us needed to use the toilet. Miss Kent told those of us who couldn’t hold it any longer to follow her.
‘The children need to use the conveniences,’ she announced to the taller of the two guards. Miss Kent looked especially short beside him. I noticed how she held her head high to add an inch or two. ‘The. Toilet.’ She pointed at us, enunciating her words slowly and clearly, as grown-ups do when they’re not sure the other person understands.
The soldier looked at us without moving a muscle. We stared back, jiggling about like tadpoles, all of us bursting. He eventually seemed to comprehend the situation and waved us along.
‘Hurry,’ he said, as Miss Kent shepherded us past, making sure to stand between him and us. ‘Quick, quick.’
I stared at his sword as we marched past.
In the girls’ toilets, notices in Japanese writing had been stuck to the sinks, the mirrors, the doors, even to the bar of soap. We all spent a penny as quickly as we could and followed Miss Kent back to the assembly hall. We passed a soldier who was sticking more notices to the classroom doors and to trophy cabinets along the corridor.
‘What is he doing, Miss?’ I whispered.
‘They’re taking what is not rightfully theirs, Nancy,’ Miss Kent replied, stiffly. ‘But we won’t stand in their way. They are, after all, only things. They can’t put a notice on us, can they?’
As we passed Miss Butterworth’s classroom, Miss Kent stopped suddenly. The door was broken at the hinge and I could hear a soldier shouting orders inside.
‘You can jolly well shout all you like, young man, but you will not place one of your notices on my desk.’
I recognized Miss Butterworth’s voice, although it sounded strained, and much louder than usual.
I knew I shouldn’t look. Like the blind beggar who’d died at the end of our street in Shanghai, I knew that if Mummy were there she would tell me to cover my eyes and look away. There are some things little girls aren’t meant to see, darling. Best not to look. But the temptation to peer into the classroom was too great. I looked, and immediately wished I hadn’t. I saw the soldier raise his arm. I saw him punch Miss Butterworth in the face. I heard the clatter of books and chairs as she stumbled backwards and hit her head against the edge of the desk. And I heard the panic and fear in Miss Kent’s voice as she ran forward, screaming at the soldier. ‘Stop! Stop it! Leave her alone, you brute!’
Despite the many things I couldn’t understand that morning, I knew, with absolute certainty, that in those few horrible minutes, everything had changed. It didn’t matter that we were a Christian missionary school, or that our fathers were well respected and our mothers well dressed. In the end, our parents’ occupations, our nice homes and clothes, the language we spoke and the colour of our skin, didn’t make any difference. We were at war now. Chinese, British, American, Dutch – we were all the same.
We were the enemy.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
