Empire of the Sun - J. G. Ballard [96]
Outside the guardhouse, where the commander of the gendarmerie unit had established himself, the block leaders were talking to a Japanese sergeant. A wan-faced Dr Ransome, coolie hat in hand, his shoulders stooped in his cotton shirt, stood beside them. Mrs Pearce entered the guardhouse, smoothing her hair and cheeks, already giving orders to a soldier in her rapid Japanese.
The prisoners at the front of the crowd turned and ran across the parade ground, shouting to the others.
‘One suitcase! Everyone back here in an hour!’
‘We’re leaving for Nantao!’
‘Everybody out! Line up by the gates!’
‘They’re holding our rations at Nantao!’
‘One suitcase!’
Already the missionary couples were standing on the steps of G Block, bags in hand, as if they had somehow sensed the coming move. Watching them, Jim reassured himself that the camp was only being moved, not closed.
‘Come on, Mr Maxted – we’re going back to Shanghai!’
He helped the weakened man to his feet, and steered him through the hundreds of running prisoners. When Jim reached his room he found that Mrs Vincent was already packed. As her son slept in his bunk, she stood by the window, watching her husband return from the parade ground. Jim could see that she had begun to shed all memories of the camp.
‘We’re leaving, Mrs Vincent. We’re going to Nantao.’
‘Then you’ll have to pack.’ She was waiting for him to go, so that she could be alone in the room for a few last minutes.
‘Right. I’ve been to Nantao, Mrs Vincent.’
‘So have I. I can’t imagine why the Japanese should want us to go again.’
‘Our rations are in a godown there.’ Jim was already debating whether to carry Mrs Vincent’s suitcase. New alliances needed to be forged, and Mrs Vincent’s slim but strong-hipped body might well have more stamina than Mr Maxted’s. As for Dr Ransome, he would be busy with his patients, most of whom would soon start dying.
‘I’ll be seeing my parents soon, Mrs Vincent.’
‘I’m glad.’ With the mildest irony, she asked: ‘Do you think they’ll give me a reward?’
Embarrassed, Jim lowered his head. During his illness he had mistakenly tried to bribe Mrs Vincent with the promise of a reward, but it intrigued him that she could see the humour in her refusal to raise a finger to help him. Jim hesitated before leaving the room. He had spent nearly three years with Mrs Vincent, and still found himself liking her. She was one of the few people in Lunghua Camp who appreciated the humour of it all.
Trying to match her, he said: ‘A reward? Mrs Vincent, remember you’re British.’
29
The March to Nantao
Like the migration of a shabby country carnival, the march from Lunghua Camp to the dockyards at Nantao began two hours later. Exhausted even before they started by the long wait, Jim watched the prisoners assemble from his place at the head of the column. Under the bored gaze of the Japanese gendarmerie, the internees stepped cautiously through the gates, the men loaded with suitcases and bedrolls, the women with bundles of ragged clothes wrapped in straw panniers. Fathers carried sick infants on their backs, while mothers steered the smaller children by the hand. As he stood behind the Japanese staff car that was to lead the march, Jim was surprised by the sight of so many possessions, which had remained under the bunks throughout the years at Lunghua.
Recreation had clearly come high on the prisoners’ list of priorities while they packed their suitcases before being interned. Having spent the years of peace on the tennis courts and cricket fields of the Far East, they confidently expected to pass the years of war in the same way. Dozens of tennis racquets hung from the suitcase handles; there were cricket bats and fishing rods, and even a set of golf clubs tied to the bundles of pierrot costumes carried by Mr and Mrs Wentworth. Ragged and undernourished, the prisoners shuffled along the road on their wooden clogs and formed themselves into a procession some three hundred yards in length. Already the effort