James shuffled along a dirt road through the wilderness. Road stretched for miles ahead of him, those ancient cobbles the only sign of civilisation except for smoke and ruin.
Five days walking through the Chinese countryside. The worn shoes that he stole from a dead body hung useless round his neck tied together by their laces. His blistered bare feet ached from the constant walking. He moved south, keeping the north star behind him. When they were transported to the internment camp for foreign nationals following the fall of the Shanghai international centre, he recalled seeing the truck driver consulting a compass, its needle pointed north. That meant south would be his best bet to return to Shanghai, the only place he could imagine his parents being.
The tattered remnants of his school uniform clung to his body like the ragged wedding dress of Miss Haversham. A memento from before everything went wrong. The blazer had been repaired and resized with rags so many times over his imprisonment that he wondered if it was even possible to call it the same uniform. Whenever a jacket was freed up by the death of a fellow inmate it was always the strongest that got dibs and James was never the strongest. When did you finally have to admit that the past was gone and wasn’t coming back?
He breathed out a weary sigh, a cross between a sardonic laugh and an exhausted, sorrowful moan. Such astute literary connections would have made Master Haroldson proud. Not that his English education had been much use to him in the end. The finest tutors in the entire orient amounted to nothing when being struck by a Japanese baton.
James placed a bony, calloused hand on his chest, where his school badge was, the familiar crest of the English lion’s head overlaid with a Hong Kong orchid on a field of blue. A sentimental symbol that no longer had any meaning. The overwhelming halls of his boarding school returned to his mind. When he thought about it, it wasn't too different to the camp. A regimented life, overcrowded dorms, and food that could only loosely claim the term. He'd even received a few beatings in his time there. How strange the impact a simple shift of context made. If he could he would go back to that school in an instant.
A ruined Chinese village appeared up ahead, he saw the smoke before he saw the buildings, and he smelt the death before he saw the bodies. The leavings of the bands of disgraced Imperial soldiers roaming the countryside to take out the rage and shame of their defeat on whatever they came across.
The rotting festering bodies of the villagers lay burnt and naked in the street. Old people, pregnant women, children, all lay strewn like autumn leaves in a park. In the centre of the village, among the piles of ash and crumbling brickwork, there was an attempt at a mass grave. James cautiously approached to peer inside the hole and saw more bodies littered with bullet holes. Their sallow faces stuck out from the ground frozen in terror. The blood mixed into the ground to form a sickly mud.
The smell was overwhelming. Like farts that just got worse and worse, after years in a tightly packed dorm he was familiar with the smell. There was something else though, a sickly sweetness, like the cheap perfume worn by the women he saw standing on the corner of the streets when he was driven through Shanghai.
The sound of buzzing flies feasting filled the air like radio static. Otherwise, there was silence, an entire village wiped out.
A rock clattered to the ground followed by scurrying footsteps. Fight or flight. Always flight. James scrambled to a ruined wall and hid behind it. He waited for the sound of a rifle bolt clicking into place and angry Japanese.
No shots came. Just the soft, padding footsteps and the ever-present buzzing. James peered over the wall with wide, curious eyes. His chest rose and fell grotesquely as his breaths quickened and the footsteps continued. His fingers tightened around the wall, ready to push him away so he could make a mad dash for safety. Not that it would do him much good.
Instead of a soldier, out came the small, fat body of a Pallas cat sniffing at a dead body to see if it was worth eating. It shot back and hissed. Even for an animal the place was revolting.
His survival instincts reorganised themselves. Starvation barged into the front of his mind; the emptiness in his stomach called like the incessant drone of an air raid siren. The creature was fat enough to feed him for days. Already he’d decided how he would prepare and preserve the meat.
His body weak and weary, James stood no chance of catching the cat without a weapon. Without taking his eyes from his prey, he felt around the splintered floor for something with the potential to kill. His fingertips fell upon a broken brick which had fallen from the wall. He picked it up and weighed it in his hands. He had to be precise he only had one chance.
Straightening his back, he stepped into the road and crept up on the cat as it groomed itself. Like a trained dancer, he placed his feet with pinpoint accuracy. His heart beat a steady rhythm filling his ears with blood and his heart with lust.
The urge to lunge straight at the cat as he drew closer to it became a compulsion. The battle for control between his stomach and his mind raged with a furious passion. In his eagerness and desperation, he grew reckless. He slipped in a puddle and fell with a heavy thud. The cat reeled back at the sound, hissing at James before darting out of sight narrowly dodging the brick James lobbed at it with a frustrated scream.
The brick missed and ricocheted off the green helmet of a soldier. The sharp clang resounded in James' ears, a death knoll signaling his doom.
James shot to his feet. Eyes wide as dinner plates, his mouth opened in a shocked ‘O’ as he stepped back in terror. The soldier spun on his heels, rifle raised, and aimed at James. Their eyes locked, and there was a brief pause as the soldier realised he was aiming at a child.
James didn’t wait for the soldier’s hesitation to end. He spat out a hurried apology in Japanese, bowing his head in deference before sprinting away. He was small and fast, it had saved him in the past but he'd been walking so long he didn't know if he had the energy to escape. He refused to look back in case that moment’s pause was all it took for a bullet to dart through his chest.
Unable to go on, James hid behind an upturned cart and scrunched his eyes closed, not wanting to look into the barrel of the rifle that would kill him. He pressed his balled fists against his ears to drown the noise around him. Prayers came to mind, everything he'd learnt. The Hail Mary, Our Father, even some Hebrew prayers that he'd learnt from his friend Joshua. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t even want to be here. He wanted his mother. The tears stung as they fell down his cheek. He curled into a ball and tried to shield himself from the horror that was about to befall him. After everything, this was how it ended?
A voice broke through his defences, speaking disjointed, heavily accented, but ultimately gentle Cantonese. Raising his head, James saw the soldier he had struck. The soldier knelt in front of him, his rifle slung idly over his shoulder, holding a chocolate bar in offering.
James hesitated. Three years of kindness being dangled in front of him before it was snatched away and used as a reason to beat him made him cautious of generosity. When no blows came, James took the bar and devoured it so quick he finished it before the flavour registered in his brain. When it did, he enjoyed ecstasy a second time.
The soldier laughed as he watched James lick the chocolate from his fingers. There was a cautious pity in his pale blue eyes. As if he were afraid that James were so fragile he would break. His comrades came to see what all the commotion was.
“This one’s got some hunger on him,” the soldier said.
The other soldiers laughed as James eyed them with suspicion. These weren't Japanese soldiers, he thought. His eyes fell on the American flag on his tunic which was the colour of old schoolbook pages.
“Thank you,” he said.
The soldier raised an eyebrow and grinned. “English?”
James nodded. His gaze moved to the soldier’s helmet, there was a stain of dust from where the rock had hit it.
The soldier removed his helmet and gave it three hard knocks. “Don’t worry, this thing’s sturdier than a mountain. Helmet’s pretty thick too,” he said, laughing at his own joke. There was kindness in his smile, it didn't suit a soldier. After a moment’s consideration he placed the helmet on James’ head and held his hand out. “Name’s Allen.”
James furiously wiped his hand on his shirt before shaking Allen’s. He hadn't washed for days so they were covered in filth. Despite his efforts, Allen’s hand still came back blackened.
“James.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you James. Where’d you come from?”
James pointed down the road. Allen frowned.
“How old are you James?”
“Fourteen.”
“Fourteen?" he repeated, "You're so small you could pass for ten."
James narrowed his eyes.
Allen cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably.
"Sorry, took me by surprise. Where are your parents?”
James shrugged. “My dad’s dead…” He paused here, unable to speak of his mother the immensity of what had happened finally weighed down on him. He wanted his mother and he had no idea where she was. James’ shoulders started to tremble.
Allen released a sympathetic sigh, joined his men and spoke in a hushed tone.
“Why don’t you come with us James?” Allen asked when they were finished, “Get you somewhere safe and see if we can find your mom.”
“Alright,” James said as he wiped his eyes with his forearm. He didn't have any better options. If anyone could find his mother it might as well be them. He followed Allen to the edge of the village where a half-track awaited.
The soldiers watched James as he bounced in the trundling half-track. His emaciated body made them uncomfortable. The soldiers had heard of the horrors of the concentration camps in Europe and had seen similar sights in China and the Pacific. Dead bodies were one thing. Bodies can be turned away from, shut out. It’s not so easy when the atrocities stare back at you with sleep-deprived eyes in sunken sockets. To make up for their horror they stuffed him with all the rations in their packs.
Four weeks later, James was called into the office of the head matron. He’d grown accustomed to the antiseptic walls of the Red Cross centre that had been set up to reunite the children of foreign nationals with their families so he didn’t need a guide. He stood outside the large wooden door, unsure of what to expect.
His clothes were smart and new. A pressed shirt with short sleeves, and a pair of brown shorts. His polished boots shone like bullet casings. These were the nicest clothes he’d worn in years, but still he carried the insignia of his school in his pocket. Everything else he’d discarded willingly but not this. Unlike the rags he had worn, that insignia was not a reminder of the war and the camp he had lived in but instead of the time before.
The nurses said he was filling out. His ribs were hidden with a layer of fat, and his cheeks were no longer the stained colour of dirt. There were still purple bags beneath his eyes; he didn’t sleep much. Too many nightmares.
When he entered the Matron’s office, a strange woman in a blue dress sat at the desk. On her breast she wore a green broach which James thought he recognised. Beneath a blue beret, gold hair fell to the woman’s shoulders. A string of pearls clung to the milk-white skin of her neck which contrasted James’ leathery, sunburnt skin.
James was wrapped in a tight hug before he had the chance to introduce himself. The only thing he saw of the woman’s face before she dashed to him was a flash of emerald green eyes.
“Oh James,” she gasped. Her body trembled as she sobbed into his shoulder leaving a wet stain on the shoulder of his shirt.
The woman pulled away, holding James at arm’s length and he finally got to take her in. The wrinkles at the corner of her ruby-red lips denoted a smile worn a hundred times or more. The gentle green eyes that had looked down at him with love as he was put to bed years ago were filled with tears. The woman dabbed at them with a handkerchief. She whispered, her lips trembling, “You’ve had a long journey home haven’t you James?”
James’ face contorted as tears fell freely. There was a feeling like finally being able to breathe after spending a long time underwater. He whispered, “mum?” and hugged her tight enough so they would never be separate again.