Dragon Land (35 page)

I repeated myself. ‘What do you think about the christening in the Mission church?’

‘I don’t mind, Lizzie, and I think it’s a good idea.’

‘We will have to have godparents. Have you anyone in mind?’ I asked.

He put the paper down. ‘Well, I would like Alex and Sue Lin.’

I wrote this down. ‘I thought of asking Elsie and Ping Li. Do you want to come with me to the Mission church?’

He stood up. ‘Let’s go now, as Alex and I will be very busy with the book, so we’d better get the christening done as soon as possible.’

We met the Reverend Miller in his little house beside the church and he welcomed us into his study. His desk was awash with papers. ‘I’m writing this week’s sermon,’ he said, scooping them up and putting them on another table by the wall.

I explained why we were there. ‘I know we should have had him christened before this, but we were unsure about the ceremony in a foreign country.’

He assured us it was all right. ‘We have our own little bit of Britain here, as well as the other nationalities that go to make up this settlement, and I have done quite a few christenings over the years.’ He took out his diary. ‘I can manage it a week on Sunday, if that’s fine with you?’

I looked at Jonas, who nodded.

Reverend Miller beamed at us. ‘Well, I’ll put it in my diary, and may I say how pleased I am that you’ve asked me to do it. Most of the expatriates go to the grander Episcopalian church.’

I said I wanted Peter to be christened in the Church of Scotland, and the minister beamed again. ‘Right then, that’s settled.’

I was aware that Peter was no longer a tiny baby – he was coming up to his second birthday – but I was glad it was happening. I hadn’t broached the subject before because neither Jonas or myself were members of any church. I had grown very fond of Betsy and Jeannie but had rarely met their brother, so I was pleased he had been so helpful.

I had a lot to do in the run-up to the Sunday. Elsie and Ping Li were thrilled to be asked to be godparents, while Jonas said he would ask Alex and Sue Lin. Alex said yes immediately, but Sue Lin was away and couldn’t be contacted, so I said to Jonas I was going to ask Zheng Yan.

I was amused by Jonas’s attitude. He was a typical man when it came to planning family matters and he was content to leave everything to me. I wanted a quiet baptism, then to have a few of our friends back to the house. I sent a note to Lorna-May and her husband, and she appeared at the door the following morning.

She was dressed in a very chic-looking dress and looked like she was off to some function or other. ‘Oh no, this is my everyday dress,’ she said when I commented on it. ‘I’m thinking your house will be too small afterwards. Let me book the Racecourse clubhouse, as it’s grander, with lots of room.’

I didn’t want to hurt her feelings by telling her I preferred my own house, so I made up a little white lie. ‘I’m sorry, Lorna-May, but Jonas has planned it and I don’t think he’ll like his plans changed.’

She wasn’t happy, but I knew she was the kind of woman who always deferred to her husband, and she wouldn’t want to offend Jonas by telling him his house wasn’t grand enough. I was waiting for her to criticise the church, but she said nothing. Maybe she thought Jonas had also planned this and that silence was the best policy.

On the Sunday we all made our way to the church. It was a warm, humid day, but the interior of the small church was cool. There was a large congregation, a mixture of expatriates and Chinese residents, and the service, although simple, was lovely. Alex looked so serious as the minister read out a godparent’s duties, but Elsie, Zheng Yan and Ping Li nodded as he spoke.

I spotted Lorna-May and Conrad in the congregation, as their fashionable outfits made them stand out like exotic flowers amongst the plainer clothes of the parishioners.

I had hired a couple of young Chinese girls to serve the food and drink, which they did with their usual smiling faces, and the day was a success. During the service I missed Margaret and wished she could have been with us, and I also thought of my mother and Granny and wished they could have been there to see Jonas and Peter.

Betsy had played the organ for my favourite hymn, ‘By Cool Siloam’s Shady Rill’ and she now stood with her sister and brother, getting their photograph taken with Peter. Alex had started his godparent’s duties right away by offering to take all the photos, and I knew I would treasure this day forever.

Elsie gave Peter a silver rattle, while Alex handed over a silver teething ring. Lorna-May held Peter for her photo, and her gift was an inscribed silver cup in a satin-lined box. I thanked them all for their generosity and for coming to our family occasion. It was at the end of the afternoon when Zheng Yan and Ping Li were leaving that they handed me the most beautiful parchment scroll with Peter’s date of birth and the attributes of a child born in the Year of the Boar. It was all written in Chinese calligraphy and I hung it up above his cot.

As we went to bed that night, Jonas and I stood looking down on our sleeping child, and I couldn’t help but think what a very fortunate little boy he was.

When the photos were developed, I sent copies off to Margaret, Maisie, Laura, Pat, and Sandy and Marie.

Margaret wrote back saying she wished she could have been with us on our special occasion, a sentiment I endorsed, while Laura asked who the two tiny Chinese people were. ‘They look so cute, as if they should be on top of a wedding cake,’ she said.

I wrote back and told her they were my dearest friends, and although they might look ‘cute’, as she said, I would gladly put my life in their hands if the need ever arose.

Elsie, Peter and I continued going once a week to the Mission to help Betsy and Jeannie with the influx of refugees. As Betsy said, there didn’t seem to be an end to the stream of displaced people from the northern regions. Some of the families had walked hundreds of miles, but they waited with patience and good manners until they could all be fed with a bowl of rice.

Elsie never mentioned Ronnie again after her disastrous meeting with the mill manager, but I was worried about her. She had seemed so alive at the christening, but now she was pale and tired-looking. Some days her dress was wrinkled, as if she had slept in it or hadn’t ironed it, which I knew couldn’t be the case, because we both sent out our laundry to the local Chinese laundry. Every week a wizened old woman would call at the house and go away with our bundle and return later that day with it all beautifully washed and ironed. As with the paper boy, I always gave her some extra money and she would bow to me as she handed over the washing.

The Chinese people seemed to work for a pittance and on the busy streets it was common to see old men almost bent double with bamboo poles slung across their shoulders and huge bundles of goods hanging from them. It was the same in the shops, which stayed open from morning until late at night, with entire families working in them; in workshops, tiny children with dark hair and large, luminous eyes bent over sewing machines or served food from the street carts and small restaurants.

I knew Dundee had its jute workers who stayed in slum housing and worked long hours in the many jute mills, and they were similar to the maze of narrow streets that led off from the Bund and the river. There were dark, poky houses that seemed to overflow with people and street markets with live chickens, thin mangy-looking dogs and food all mixed up beside the stalls.

Ping Li and I would walk through these streets as she bought swathes of material for her dresses, and we would hire a rickshaw to take us back to Bubbling Well Road. I sensed a tension in these streets, but thought I was imagining it until Ping Li said the same.

‘People are afraid of the Japanese armies. Stories are arriving here with the refugees and they hope the armies don’t come to Shanghai.’

‘But surely this is the International Settlement under the British, American and French governments, Ping Li.’

‘The Japanese don’t recognise any treaties. They work to their own agendas. That is what Zheng Yan says.’

On Peter’s birthday on the tenth of May we took him to the zoo. I could hardly believe he was two years old. He held out his chubby arms when we passed the cages and waved his hands at the monkeys as they capered in the trees in their compound. I had a slight pain in my side and thought I had pulled a muscle, but it went away. Still, I was glad when we headed for home to the birthday tea and a cake with the two candles.

Peter gazed in delight at his cake, but he kept blowing bubbles instead of blowing the candles out, so Jonas did it for him. His little face crumpled when the lights went out, so I relit them and he managed to blow them out by himself.

‘Who’s a clever little boy?’ He looked at me and I said, ‘Peter’s the cleverest little boy in the whole wide world.’

He put his fist into the cake and it came out all sticky with sponge and jam, and Jonas and I laughed.

Although life went on as usual by July 1937 there was a different atmosphere, felt by not only the Chinese population but also the expatriates. The tension was like the threat of thunder before the storm breaks.

This tension wasn’t helped by the arrival of Japanese naval ships anchored in the river or the fact that Chiang Kai-shek refused to join forces with Mao Zedong’s army in a joint display of strength against the Japanese threat. Zheng Yan was incensed by this.

‘You think he would put the safety of the people before his hatred of the Communists,’ he said bitterly.

Then word came through that the Japanese army was fighting a battle with Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist army on the outskirts of Peking.

Jonas gave me a searching look. ‘I won’t go if you don’t want me to, because you and Peter are my main concerns and not my job. Alex can quite easily go alone and take his photographs.’

I so much wanted Jonas to stay with me and Peter, just our little threesome in our own house, but I knew when I married him what his job was, so I said I would be fine. ‘I don’t suppose the Japanese will attack the Settlement.’ Although I sounded confident, I certainly wasn’t.

As he packed his bag and stowed it into Alex’s car, he made me promise not to stay if there was any danger. ‘Now you must listen, Lizzie, and take Peter away from here if anything does happen. If they advise the women and children to evacuate, then you must go, either to Hong Kong or back to Scotland.’

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘I don’t want to leave you here, Jonas, and return home. This is my life now, with you and Peter.’

He held me close. ‘Promise me you’ll go if you have to. No matter where you are, I will come to be with you. Now, do you promise me?’

I tried hard not to be upset, but I whispered, ‘I promise.’

‘You’ll have Elsie and the Miller sisters to help you if you need it. Zheng Yan and Ping Li will help as well.’

So I stood on my veranda and watched as the car slowly drove away, with Jonas’s face gazing at me till it disappeared from view. When I went to take Peter over to Elsie’s house, the street looked much the same as usual. Maybe, I thought, Jonas was just making sure I knew what to do if anything happened; maybe it wasn’t that an attack was imminent more that the Japanese were playing a game of cat and mouse.

Two days later Lorna-May arrived at the house and said she and Conrad were moving back to America. ‘We only planned to be here for a few years,’ she said, ‘and now it’s time to go back.’

Normally this wouldn’t have worried me, but because of the heightened tension and the departure of Jonas, I suddenly felt afraid. ‘Does Conrad know anything about the Japanese attack on Peking, Lorna-May?’

‘Why would Conrad know about the Japanese’s intentions, Lizzie?’

Quite honestly I didn’t know, so I said lamely, ‘Well, he’s the head of the American Bank here in Shanghai and maybe the FBI has warned him to leave.’

She laughed. ‘You’ve been watching too many films with your friend Elsie. Conrad doesn’t know anyone in the FBI or in any other government agencies. No, we planned this move a while back, but can I give you some advice?’

When I nodded, she went on. ‘Get Jonas to go back home with you and leave Shanghai, and please tell your friend Elsie to do the same.’

‘Jonas and Alex have gone to Peking to write about the battle between the Japanese and Chiang Kai-shek’s army.’

She went quite pale under her Max Factor medium-beige foundation and her red lips clamped together. ‘I can’t believe Jonas would leave his wife and son alone to go off filming and writing about an incident a thousand miles away.’ She took her little notebook from her elegant handbag. ‘I must phone Conrad at the bank and get him to arrange two tickets for Peter and you on our ship.’

I was so surprised that for a moment I was speechless. As she thumbed through her book, I finally found my voice. ‘I’m not leaving, Lorna-May. Jonas will be back and if anything does develop then we’ll make plans, but not at the moment.’

She gave me a sorrowful glance. ‘I wish you would change your mind, Lizzie, and leave with us. But if you’ve made up your mind, I’ll have to say goodbye.’

She was at the door when I ran after her and gave her a hug. ‘Thank you for the thought, Lorna-May. You’ve been a very good friend to us and I won’t forget it. I hope you both have a happy trip back home and, who knows, we may meet up again one day.’

Lorna-May wiped her eyes with a tiny handkerchief and she hurried down the veranda steps. ‘Say goodbye to Jonas and Peter for us, and I hope you all stay safe.’

I was touched by her concern for our safety and tried to tell myself that their leaving Shanghai had been planned beforehand, but that didn’t ring true. If that had been the case, then she would have put on a grand leaving party at the Racecourse club. No, something or someone had warned them of danger. Was it the presence of the Japanese naval ships or some other danger I couldn’t even begin to imagine?

I went back inside but was suddenly bent over with pain in my side. It made me feel sick, but after a while it subsided. I made a mental note to go and see the doctor at the hospital, but first I had to make Peter’s breakfast.