The Yellow Papers (21 page)

There were other idiosyncrasies that also had to be tackled diplomatically, in particular the habit of Chinese soldiers to sing patriotic songs at the top of their voices when marching, and that of sentries to shoot any bird flying overhead when on duty.

‘It's almost an instinct,' Chong Lueng, a Chinese officer, explained to Edward as he threw the basketball over the branch that was their improvised hoop. ‘Most of these men are peasants who've lived through many famines – when they see food, they don't let it get away.'

‘It's an instinct that'll get them killed.'

Edward liked Chong Lueng. The man had studied in America and lived all his adult life in Shanghai, though the two had never met before this. They'd become close and often spent their spare time together, trying to keep boredom at bay.

‘They'll learn. They're good soldiers.' He threw the ball to Edward.

Edward agreed, but he was worried. These men were intelligent and spirited, and were becoming skilled guerrilla fighters. Their resilience was extraordinary, their patriotism beyond question, and he found himself admiring and respecting them more and more each day. But none of this mattered if not backed by artillery and air power, of which China had very little.

By the end of March the temperature rose, the rains came, and the coming of spring was evident; the locals called it ‘the season of excited little insects'. It lived up to its name as thousands of mosquitoes spread malaria, and millions of caterpillars smothered the pines and crawled into mess tins and between clothes and bedding. Jaundice and dysentery also became a problem, but still the training and the boredom continued.

Finally in early June the men were told they were moving out – not to Canton as expected, but to the Hubei Province, which prompted Edward to hold emergency classes in Mandarin.

For eighteen days they travelled upriver by sampan towards Kuantu, their explosives piled high on sidings. The boats had to be towed from shore, and they soon learned it was easier if naked except for the coolie hats they'd bought at the first village. The rains continued, swelling the river by inches overnight, and often when manoeuvring the boats around booms the ropes would snap. Then there were no more booms or villages but instead rapids to battle against, so that by nightfall the men fell exhausted on their bedding, indifferent even to the constant swarm of mosquitoes.

When they reached Kuantu they heard of the fall of Tobruk, but many refused to believe it; it could only be an over-exaggeration. In any case they were all too ill with diarrhoea, and many with malaria as well, to think too much about Tobruk.

For the next two weeks they travelled on foot, their explosives carried in small square baskets with the help of coolies. Their muscles ached, their feet blistered then bled then festered, until at last they reached their base in a valley near Hankou. From there they were deployed into smaller contingents. Edward had requested the one near the border of the Kiangsi and Chekiang Provinces. It would place him no more than two hundred miles from Shanghai. Two hundred miles from Ming Li.

From his bed in the sick-tent Edward heard raised Chinese voices. He was suffering from dysentery, but he considered himself lucky compared to some of the others – men who went to bed feeling fine would wake next morning shivering with a raging fever. Malaria, anaemia, dysentery and typhoid were now rampant. Stomach ulcers, snakebites, boils and scratches that wouldn't heal were the norm. There was a doctor from the hospital thirty miles away who walked to their camp every few days, tended the sick and walked back again, but there was little he could do. He urged them to scour the black market for quinine, salts, anything that could help. In the months they'd been here food had become so scarce they all looked like skeletons, medical supplies were drastically low, and at any one time seventy per cent of the men were sick.

A gun went off and Edward reached for his shoes.

In the middle of the camp six Chinese men knelt on the ground, and beside them a seventh lay, a bullet through his skull. They were dressed as pedlars and each had a rope twisted around his ankles and wrists and up around his neck. Chong Lueng stood behind one of the men, the barrel of his gun against the man's head. Others stood around, watching.

‘What's going on?'

Chong Lueng glanced at Edward, but didn't lower his gun.

‘Puppets,' he said, and pulled the trigger.

Edward nodded. One of the problems they all faced were puppet soldiers – Chinese soldiers who had joined the Japanese. These men were better fed, better equipped and better paid than the soldiers of the Chinese army, and their job was to entice the Chinese to desert and join them. It had become very difficult to know who were the enemy and who were allies.

As Edward walked back to his tent he counted five more shots.

They'd helped bury the bodies and were sitting on the ground leaning against a tree, competing to see who could swat the largest number of big green flies that kept landing on their limbs to drink their sweat. Edward and Chong Lueng, like all the men, were now so weak that even something like helping dig a grave exhausted them. For weeks now nothing had happened. No new orders came through, the Japanese blocked radio communications as soon as they began, and they'd received no mail for months. They kept up marches and arms training but saw little action, and many Chinese guerrilla groups refused to work with the Western trained battalion. Morale was low and the men were going crazy with boredom or were too weak to care. There was talk of invaliding them out. They played cards until they couldn't look at another card, and even read the labels on the tins of whatever food they had left, just for something to do.

A small detail that had gone out the previous night returned to camp, accompanied by a civilian from Shanghai. The man looked ill and starved. He had sores on his arms that he scratched incessantly.

‘They've been doing it for a while now,' he said to Edward and Chong Lueng during his debriefing. ‘Any Westerner that's still around is sent to the internment camps just outside the city.'

‘Security?'

‘Heavy during the day, but not so much at night. They're a strange lot – at night, they withdraw the sentry to the main posts. So you only get the odd patrol.'

‘How did you get out?'

The man laughed.

‘It's crazy – I just waited for the patrol to pass, lifted the wire and ran like hell. Thought I'd get shot any second, but no, nothing. I'm not the first to go like that.'

Edward nodded. They'd had other Shanghailanders reach them with the same story. If they made it through to their lines, the guerrillas would help them through free China to India.

‘And Shanghai itself?'

‘It's bad. Real bad. They'll shoot you right there in the street if they don't like the look of you. The place is so crowded with refugees you can hardly move – five, six times what it was a couple of years ago. The Japs grab everything – houses, businesses, the shirt off your back if they fancy it. Then you've got the scum; they'll denounce anyone to curry favour with the Japs, even their own mothers. Everyone's edgy. You can't trust anyone. Everyone's starving …'

The man stopped and shook his head, frowning. His fingers picked at a scab on his arm, and in the silence he picked at it faster and faster even as it bled, still shaking his head. Edward and Chong Lueng waited.

‘There was this monk. Young fella, maybe thirteen, fourteen. He was begging; you know how they do. Then he collapsed. They were on him before he came to. On him like a pack of dogs …'

Edward poked at the fire, thinking of what the Shanghailander had told them. He was sitting in the smoke of a smouldering campfire with Chong Lueng in an attempt to escape the mosquitoes that were always worse at this time of the evening.

Earlier the men had received the first mail in months. It had been a strange experience for Edward. He'd received, amongst others, letters from his mother, but at the same time one from Julia, dated four months earlier, which told him of his mother's death. She'd died quietly in her sleep, Julia assured him. The funeral had been attended by all those from the surrounding properties, and Macoomba had closed down for the morning so that everyone in the township could also attend.
Even your old gardener was there
, Julia had noted, and for that, Edward was grateful. Then, before he'd even come to the end of the letter, he'd quickly encapsulated his grief – to allow himself these feelings, here, now, would only weaken him further. He could not allow himself to lose control. He imagined his grief in a little box closed tight – one of those Japanese puzzle boxes that needed hundreds of moves to open, maybe – pushed down deep inside himself, not to be opened until back home.

Chen Mu had also sent his condolences, and he'd told Edward how he too had been away when his own mother had died, and how angry and helpless and guilty he'd felt, and how it had taken him years to realise that he had no reason to feel this way.

But amongst all these letters, there had been nothing from Ming Li. These past months, falling asleep thinking about her, Edward had been able to convince himself that she'd be all right, that Xueliang would keep her safe, that he'd get a letter from her telling him so in the very first mail bag to reach them. But there was no letter, and the Shanghailander's debriefing left no doubt in his mind – he could no longer wait to find out Ming Li's situation.

A shiver ran up his spine and he hoped he wasn't catching a fever. Not now. He was so close to Shanghai; he could be there in a matter of hours. Find her. Convince her to leave. Her and MeiMei. And yes, even Xueliang, if it had to be so. He was willing to help Xueliang escape if it meant Ming Li would be safe. If he left now, he could be back tomorrow morning. Chong Lueng would cover for him.

‘I'm going to Shanghai.'

‘You've received orders?'

Edward shook his head.

‘But you're going none the less?'

‘Tonight. I need you to cover for me.'

Chong Lueng watched the fire. On a newly added log a slater ran back and forth across its width, panicked by the heat, its shield-like plates red from the reflection of the embers surrounding it. Chong Lueng reached out and in a quick movement grabbed the creature, then opened his palm on the grass beside him. The slater scurried off.

‘You risk being court-martialled – or shot – depending on who finds you first.'

‘Will you cover for me?'

‘Why take such a risk?'

Edward didn't answer.

‘A woman, then. Don't be a fool, Edward Billings. You, of all of us, will be noticed AWOL.'

‘Will you cover for me?'

‘No.'

The men fell silent. Edward rose and paced away from the fire, then back again. If Chong Lueng wouldn't cover for him, so be it. He'd go anyway.

‘What I will do,' Chong Lueng continued, ‘is go to Shanghai in your place – something in return for what you've taught us. I have to go anyway. Quinine. If we don't get quinine we'll all die. That will be the official reason. I'll take three men. We'll have a better chance of not being noticed than you. I'll go to my contacts on the black market for medical supplies. While there, I'll find this woman. Tell me where to look and what you want me to say when I find her.'