“Johnnie…” he started. He didn’t know where to begin.
“Anyone still out there that we know?”
“Yes, but… They say that two hundred Chinese die every day on the streets. Brutally. Anonymously. Half the hospitals are still closed.”
Johnnie studied his face.
“You look a bit shell-shocked. Is there anything else going on?”
“Too much, my friend. Too much.”
“Trudy doing all right out there?”
Will nodded.
“You don’t know her that well, do you?”
“Just from around,” Johnnie said. “As well as I knew you, I suppose.”
“And what did you think of her?”
Johnnie hesitated.
“That’s a rum thing to ask. She’s your girl.”
“No, really. I want to know.”
“I liked her. What I knew of her. There was always the noise about her, I know, but I’ve learned that most of that is just that-noise. She seems a good sort, just had a lot of attention on her all the time, and I thought that must be hard.”
“Very diplomatic,” Will said.
Johnnie grinned. “What do you expect, old man?”
“Why did you never find someone? I always saw you around with a few girls, never one, never for a long time.”
“Never found anyone who’d have me,” Johnnie said lightly. “Once they’d spent enough time with me, they’d be off like a rocket.”
They sat together for a while. Johnnie brought out some homemade cigarettes.
“The good stuff, rolled from native Stanley grass.” He offered one to Will.
Will shook his head.
“What am I thinking?” He produced two packs of Red Sun cigarettes from his bag under the bed. “I brought these back for you. Japanese, of course, but the real thing, nonetheless. I don’t know if your scruples will allow it.”
Johnnie laughed with delight.
“That’s very good of you, sir!”
They smoked for a while, enjoying the small pleasure of nicotine.
“There’s a few men in C Block who’ve rigged up another shortwave,” Johnnie said. “They haven’t gotten anything interesting, but they’re trying.”
“Trudy’s got in with a bad sort,” Will said.
Johnnie looked at him. “I’d figured as much.”
“She’s in over her head, although of course she doesn’t think so. She thinks she’s doing well, surviving, getting in with those she thinks will be helpful.”
“What does she need?”
“It’s not what she needs. They’re asking her for things. Asking her for things that could compromise others.”
“That is dangerous,” Johnnie said simply. “She should watch out, and you too.”
“Yes,” Will said. “We will.”
“It’s almost time for supper,” Johnnie said, standing up. “Our brilliant cooks have invented a new dish that is startlingly good. Banana peel fried in peanut oil. If you close your eyes, it tastes like mushrooms. I can’t get enough of it.”
“Sounds good,” Will said. He was glad to stop talking about Trudy.
There were bad men.
Victor Chen, embracing Reggie Arbogast, both in the Western dress, the blue tropical wool suit, red tie. He had thrown a cocktail party for select Stanley survivors after the release. Not the riffraff, of course, but the doctors and the barristers and the company heads. He commiserated with them about what the war had done to them and their countries and plied them with champagne.
And imagine this. Governor Mark Young returning from his Malaya arrest to the site of his humiliation and that of his country. The war is over. Every effort is made to glorify the triumphant return. An RAF Dakota, escorted by Beaufighters and Corsairs of 721 Squadron. A dramatic landing at Kai Tak. Motorcycle escort back to the Pen, and then the ceremony. Guns, uniforms, pomp. He shakes the hand of community leaders, is welcomed back with speeches. And see Victor Chen there, reading a speech of his own, about Hong Kong’s fortitude and greatness of spirit.
Otsubo, reading documents in the dark, a table lamp illuminating only a small circle on the desk. His lips moving as he reads, Trudy and Dominick sitting next to each other on a bench in the office. They do not talk or look at each other. They wait for his signal.
There were dead men.
Was it his imagination? The sound of a man screaming. Will sat up in bed and tried to listen. The sound of the sea came in through the open window, but he did not hear anything else. A child cried out in his sleep. A mother shushed, drowsy.
In the morning, passing by, he discovered Johnnie gone from his room. The room was ripped apart, although the man was fastidious. The mattress lay half off the bed, sheets hanging off.
They brought Will to the interrogation rooms on the east side.
Johnnie, his eyes open, his shirt ripped and dirty. He lay on the floor of the room, a blanket thrown carelessly over him, with only a stool and a bare electric bulb. They had let Will in to see him, a warning, he supposed.
“He didn’t talk,” they said. “So this.”
“He didn’t know anything,” Will said.
“You say,” they said.
“He didn’t,” Will said.
“Do you?” they asked.
Dominick.
He screamed and begged and wheedled. Was prodded with the tip of a bayonet. His cheek scratched so blood beaded up. Then a pinkie finger broken with a mallet. Then all of the others. A week in the hole.
Denied everything. Confessed to everything.
Scratch the surface of a man. See what appears.
Wan Kee Liang, Trudy’s father.
Dead in his mansion on the Praia Grande, body wasted away, smell of urine soaking the sheets. A neglected corpse, not found for days.
There was a woman, disappeared.
Trudy clattering up the stairs of the gendarmerie headquarters on Des Voeux Road, stomach swollen, about to give birth.
Looking back to blow a kiss to Edwina Storch, who had accompanied her. Her look wistful, not condemning. We are condemned to repeat the past. Trudy’s mother, gone. Trudy, gone.
May 10, 1943
EDWINA STORCH was outside by suspect means, people whispered. She had parlayed a dead Finnish mother into a Free National passport and revoked her English citizenship. Mary Winkle had been corralled and sent to Stanley and Edwina sent her provisions as often as she could.
Spotting her on the street, Trudy went over to say hello. She had always had a soft spot for the idea of Edwina, although she had heard odd stories about her tenure at Glenealy Primary. She had apparently wielded her authority with a bit too much enthusiasm and not enough oversight. There had also been a story about a boy who had ended up in the hospital after a too vigorous disciplinary action, but that had been hushed up. He had been Eurasian, the father an English civil servant, the mother a local Chinese mistress, preferred but not legitimate. He hadn’t returned to the school.
“You’re out too?”
“Yes, thanks to my dear, departed mother. Finland.”
“Any way you can. It’s dreadful everywhere though, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but your relative Victor Chen has been very helpful to me. He has the magic touch and can procure anything!”
Trudy’s face darkened.
“For the right price, I’m sure. I’m glad he’s been helpful to someone.”
“You’re cousins, aren’t you?”
“Not exactly. I’m related to his wife, Melody. She’s in California right now. She’s going to have the baby there.”
Edwina’s eyes flickered down to Trudy’s own swollen belly.
“That works out well, I suppose.” Miss Storch lowered her voice. “Until everything here gets worked out, I mean.”
“Yes, well,” Trudy said. “I suppose it will all work out, won’t it?”
“Of course,” said the headmistress.
“Well,” Trudy said. “I hope I will see you around in this strange new world of ours. I’m just on my way to meet Dominick for lunch.”