Empire of the Sun - J. G. Ballard [117]
The presence of this American aviator cheered Jim. He confidently strode the last hundred yards towards the camp. The sight of the familiar buildings, the watch-tower and barbed-wire fence, warmed and reassured him. He was going back to his real home. If Shanghai was too dangerous, perhaps his mother and father would leave Amherst Avenue and live with him in Lunghua. In a practical sense it was a pity that the Japanese soldiers would not be there to guard them…
As Jim reached the camp he was surprised to find that the Chinese peasants and army deserters had returned to their plot beside the gates. They squatted in the sun, staring patiently at the bare-chested Briton who stood inside the wire, a holstered pistol strapped to his bony hips. Jim recognized him as Mr Tulloch, the chief mechanic at the Packard agency in Shanghai. He had spent the entire war playing cards in D Block, pausing once to have a brisk row with Dr Ransome for refusing to help with the sewage detail. Jim had last seen him lying outside the guardhouse after his abortive attempt to walk to Shanghai.
He now lounged against the gates, picking at an infected bruise on his lip and watching the activity on the parade ground. Two Britons were dragging a parachute canister and its canopy through the door of the guardhouse. A third man stood on the roof, scanning the countryside with a pair of Japanese binoculars.
‘Mr Tulloch…’ Jim pulled at the gates, rattling the heavy padlock and chain. ‘Mr Tulloch, you’ve locked the gates.’
Tulloch stared distastefully at Jim, clearly not recognizing this ragged fourteen-year-old, and suspicious of the carton of cigarettes.
‘Where the hell did you come from? Are you British, boy?’
‘Mr Tulloch, I was in Lunghua. I lived here for three years.’ When Tulloch began to wander away, Jim shouted: ‘I worked at the hospital with Dr Ransome!’
‘Dr Ransome?’ Tulloch returned to the gates. He peered sceptically at Jim. ‘Doctor shit-stirrer…?’
‘That’s it, Mr Tulloch. I stirred shit for Dr Ransome. I have to go to Shanghai and find my mother and father. We had a Packard, Mr Tulloch.’
‘He’s stirred his last shit…’ Tulloch took Sergeant Nagata’s key-ring from the ammunition pouch of his holster. He was still unsure whether to admit Jim to the camp. ‘A Packard? Good car…’
He unlocked the gates and beckoned Jim inside. Hearing the clatter, the Englishman with the bandaged hands who had shot Private Kimura strode from the guardhouse. Although emaciated, he had a strong, nervous physique, and a pallor that was heightened by his bloodied knuckles. Jim had seen the same chalk-like skin and deranged eyes in those prisoners released after months in the underground cells of the Bridgehouse police headquarters. His chest and shoulders were covered with the scars of dozens of cigarette burns, as if his body had been riddled with a hot poker in an attempt to set it alight.
‘Lock those gates!’ He pointed a bloody hand at Jim. ‘Throw him out!’
‘Price, I know the lad. His people bought a Packard.’
‘Get rid of him! We’ll have everyone with a Packard in here…’
‘Right, Lieutenant. Hop it, lad. Look sharpish.’
Jim tried to hold the gates open with his golf shoe, and Lieutenant Price punched him in the chest with a bandaged fist. Winded Jim sat down hard on the ground beside the watching Chinese. He held on to the Spam and the carton of Chesterfields, but the six Reader’s Digests inside his shirt spilled on to the grass and were instantly seized by the peasant woman. The small, starving women in their black trousers sat around him, each holding a magazine as if about to take part in a discussion group on the European war.
Price slammed the gates in their faces.