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  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Music on the Bamboo Radio

  Martin Booth was born in Lancashire and lived in Hong Kong from 1950 to 1964, where he began his education. He is married with two children and now lives in a seventeenth-century house in Somerset. He travels very widely and returns to Hong Kong at least once a year.

  Other books by Martin Booth

  PANTHER

  PoW

  WAR DOG

  MUSIC

  ON THE

  BAMBOO

  RADIO

  Martin Booth

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  First published by Hamish Hamilton Ltd 1997

  Published in Puffin Books 1998

  6

  Copyright © Martin Booth, 1997

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-0-14-193878-3

  On Christmas Day, 1941, after a fortnight of bloody fighting, the British crown colony of Hong Kong surrendered to the might of the Imperial Japanese Army. Both allied military personnel and civilians were rounded up and imprisoned.

  Very few succeeded in avoiding capture. Those who managed to escape took to the sea in small boats or fled overland into China.

  This is the story of Nicholas Holford who, guided by fate and the love of his Chinese servants, stayed behind…

  PART ONE

  DECEMBER 1941 – FEBRUARY 1942

  Nicholas crouched by the garden gate at the end of the gravel path. Through the hibiscus bushes and the iron railings, he could see at least a hundred metres along the street.

  Nothing moved. It was uncannily quiet.

  Usually the street bustled with coolies carrying loads on bamboo poles over their shoulders, amahs and other domestic servants on their way to market, passing rickshaws and handcarts laden with vegetables, squealing piglets or clucking hens. The tea-house on the corner was always busy with old men sitting at tables in front of the big brass urns, talking or playing mahjong. Their songbirds chirped in delicate cages of split cane which were suspended from the branches of the bauhinia tree overhanging the pavement.

  Now, the tea-house was boarded up and the tree had been stripped of its leaves by an explosion. The square cobblestones were littered with pieces of masonry, shards of glass and the smashed woodwork of a scarlet-painted rickshaw. Its green canvas hood lay in the gutter with its umbrella-like frame twisted, reminding him of a huge, dead bat’s wing. Both the wheels were buckled beyond repair. Further on, the remains of a street barber’s stall leaned against a wall, the stools broken, the pavement littered with the shattered white china of the barber’s bowl. They contrasted with a scatter of shattered red roof tiles.

  Nicholas looked above the buildings to the steep face of Victoria Peak rising into the sky just behind them, the sheer rocks of the mountainside sheened with water. They were the only thing which seemed not to have been affected by the fighting and, he thought, maybe that was why the summit had once been called Tai Ping Shan in Cantonese: in English, the name meant Heavenly Peace Mountain.

  A tabby cat appeared. Sauntering into the middle of the road, it sat and started to wash itself. Nicholas knew the animal. It lived in the grounds of the temple two streets down the hillside. He was about to call to it when it abruptly stopped licking a forepaw and glanced down an alleyway: then, in less time than it took to blink, it was gone.

  Straining his ears, Nicholas could just hear a faint noise. It sounded like someone softly flapping a wet cloth on a stone.

  Surely, he thought, no one could be doing their laundry. Not now, not on the morning of Christmas Day.

  The noise stopped. There was a brief rustling sound. The noise began again. A voice muttered something. Nicholas tried to pick out what was being said but the voice was not much louder than a hoarse whisper.

  As suddenly as the cat had vanished, a figure appeared on the pavement by the tea-house, half-hidden by the trunk of the bauhinia tree. As it moved forward, another materialized behind it. With every step the figures took came the soft slapping noise. They reached the tree, paused for a few seconds then stepped into the centre of the street.

  ‘Japs!’ Nicholas whispered to himself, sucking his breath in. His heart thumped against his ribs.

  Not seventy metres from him stood two Japanese infantry soldiers. They each wore a khaki uniform, their baggy trousers gathered at the knee into webbing gaiters. From their belts hung gas masks and water bottles, ammunition pouches and grenade holders whilst on their backs they carried packs. On their heads they wore circular steel helmets held in place with cotton tape elaborately tied under their chins. In their hands were rifles with fixed bayonets.

  Very cautiously, they surveyed the street, their eyes ranging over the closed doors, shuttered windows, rooftops. Satisfied they were not in any danger, they moved forward. The slapping noise was their soft rubber boots on the cobbles.

  By the rickshaw, they halted. Nicholas stared at them. They seemed to be looking straight at him. One of them slowly put his rifle to his shoulder, taking aim at the hibiscus bushes, directly at Nicholas’s head. His heart raced faster. He wanted to scream, jump up, shout out, ‘It’s all right. It’s only me. Don’t shoot. I’m only eleven.’

  A hand clamped itself over his mouth. Another gripped his shoulder as tight as a vice, pressing him down, pulling him backwards. A mouth brushed against his ear.

  ‘No make noise!’ The words were barely audible. ‘No make move quick!’

  Nicholas screwed his neck round as best he could. Fingers still covered his mouth, pressing his lips painfully into his teeth. The hands belonged to a lithe and sinewy young Chinese man with close-cropped hair, small ears and a scar on one of his high cheekbones: it was Ah Kwan, the gardener.

  ‘No talk,’ Ah Kwan murmured. ‘We go. Softly-softly. No sound. Slow, slow. No stand up.’

  He took his hand off Nicholas’s mouth and, very gradually, guided him backwards from the hibiscus bushes. Out of sight of the gate, and keeping off the path for fear of the sound of their footsteps on the loose gravel giving them away, they ran at a crouch through the gardens and up the sloping lawn to the house.

  Peony Villa was a two-storey, red-brick colonial-style house with a deep veranda running all round it upon which stood rattan chairs and several tables. The windows were covered by polished wooden slatted shutters. Along the edge of the veranda was a row of green
glazed plant pots embossed with writhing golden dragons and containing small azalea and kumquat bushes. By the front door stood a tall palm tree, its fronds of leaves fifteen metres above the ground.

  Nicholas and Ah Kwan rushed past the veranda and up the steps to the front door which opened just as they reached it. In the hallway stood Tang, the cook and head servant. With him was his wife Ah Mee. There was no need for words. The look on Ah Kwan’s face told them everything they needed to know.

  ‘No more time,’ Tang declared with authority. ‘No can stay. We go now.’

  ‘We must wait,’ Nicholas replied. ‘When my parents get back…’

  ‘No can wait,’ Tang interrupted.

  Taking Nicholas’s arm, Ah Mee explained, ‘Hong Kong no more fighting, Young Master.’

  ‘If the fighting’s ended,’ Nicholas reasoned, ‘the volunteer defence force will be dismissed and my father will come home. And my mother won’t have any more wounded people to care for, so…’

  ‘Japanese soldiers win,’ Ah Mee said quietly. ‘Catch all European people.’

  ‘If we stay, catch you, too,’ Tang went on, adding, ‘No good. Japanese soldiers very bad people. Other servant all gone. Ah Tu, Ah Choi, Ah Peng – all gone.’

  ‘They should have waited for my father,’ Nicholas retorted.

  ‘Master and Missy no come back here,’ Ah Mee said.

  From behind the big camphorwood chest next to the drawing-room door, Tang pulled four round bundles tied in blankets.

  ‘This for you,’ he declared, dropping the smallest on the lid of the chest. ‘We go now.’

  With that, he signalled to Ah Kwan who opened the front door and slipped out.

  Nicholas entered the drawing room. A carriage clock ticked loudly in the still room. Beyond the settee, armchairs and a low rosewood coffee table, stood the Christmas tree. It all looked so normal, Nicholas thought, no different from any of the other Christmas Days he could remember. Glass balls hung from its silver tinsel-draped branches to which wisps of cotton wool had been stuck for snow. Beneath the tree were presents wrapped in coloured crêpe paper tied with ribbon. He knew what his gifts were because he had peeked at them one morning just after the Japanese invaded, when his father had gone off to fight with the civilian volunteers and his mother had been called away to her auxiliary nursing post. He had a model Chinese sailing junk which really sailed, a fountain pen, a book about lizards and a penknife with a tortoiseshell handle.

  Looking at the clock, Nicholas felt a sharp pang of misery. It was nearly noon. His parents should have been there. They always opened their presents at midday. His mother sat on the settee with a sherry, Tang and the other servants waited by the door for their gifts and his father stood by the tree handing the packages out one by one.

  On a green felt-covered card table near the clock was a chessboard. To the left of it were four white pawns, a knight and a bishop whilst to the right were two black pawns and a castle.

  I was winning, Nicholas thought sadly but with a certain triumph: he rarely beat his father at chess. Yet, as he looked at the chess pieces, he realized it had been five days since the motorcycle messenger arrived and they had postponed their game. His father had grabbed his revolver, hurriedly kissing him and his mother before leaving the house. And it was, Nicholas reckoned, two days since he had seen his mother run from the house carrying her black leather nursing bag.

  Ah Kwan returned. He reported the Japanese soldiers still in the street and joined by a dozen more with an officer. They were preparing for a house-to-house search.

  ‘We go now,’ Tang repeated from the doorway. ‘Must go quick!’ He had slung his bundle on to his back.

  Nicholas had to make a decision. His mother had told him to stay near the house no matter what: she had made him promise that. Yet now Tang wanted him to leave immediately. His parents would not, he knew, mind him going off with the servants. He had often gone to market with Tang and had even accompanied Ah Kwan to an open-air theatre at Chinese New Year. Yet that was different: his parents had known where he was going then. Now they would not. What was more, he reasoned, his parents would be really upset if he was not there when they returned. This was no ordinary day, it was Christmas.

  ‘Must go!’ Tang insisted, beckoning urgently. ‘No wait!’

  ‘My parents…’ Nicholas began.

  ‘No come back!’ Tang interrupted abruptly.

  He was almost angry and this both shocked and dumbfounded Nicholas. Tang never lost his temper.

  ‘No can wait,’ Ah Mee said, appearing behind Tang, her bundle over her shoulder. ‘Must go before Japanese come.’

  ‘Maybe the Japs’ll take me to my parents,’ Nicholas suggested.

  ‘No, he no do!’ Tang exclaimed, his voice rising. ‘Japanese catch you, he beat you. More hard than you father when you naughty. Maybe he kill you. You no more argue with me. Pick up!’ He pointed at the bundle. ‘Go now!’

  Nicholas had never seen Tang like this and the sight settled his indecision. There was, he now considered, no alternative. For Tang to be so stubborn and cross there had to be good cause: neither Tang nor Ah Mee would ever deliberately make him break his word to his mother. Above all, they could be trusted for they were, to Nicholas, like family.

  ‘Just a minute,’ he said. ‘I must do something first.’

  ‘Quick!’ Tang retorted brusquely.

  Going to his father’s writing desk, Nicholas took a sheet of paper out of the drawer and, picking up his father’s silver propelling pencil, hastily scrawled upon it:

  Dear Mum and Dad, I’ve gone with Tang and Ah Mee. I’m all right and I will come back later on. Happy Christmas. Love, Nicky.

  Folding the note into an envelope, he laid it on the blotter and, almost without thinking, put the pencil in his pocket.

  Nicholas, Tang and Ah Mee hastily followed Ah Kwan across the garden and, leaving it through a gate by the servants’ quarters, followed a watercourse which ran through thick bushes along the hillside above the house. Over their heads towered the mountain. To their right, the tenements and steep narrow streets of Western District were spread beneath them. Beyond the buildings was the harbour, almost empty of ships, and the peninsula of Kowloon with its backdrop of hills. Eventually, they reached a shallow depression in the side of the mountain, sheltered by overhanging bushes.

  ‘This a safe place,’ Tang declared, lowering his bundle. ‘We stop here.’

  ‘What are we going to do, Tang?’ Nicholas enquired.

  ‘Night-time come, we go,’ Tang answered. ‘Over Kowloon-side. No good stay on Hong Kong island. Japanese can find us too easy.’

  Hunched under the bushes, Nicholas looked at the three servants. He had known them all his life, for as long as he had known his parents. They were as much a part of his family as his father and mother: indeed, he had spent more time with Tang and Ah Mee than with his parents. Even before the war they had been out most of the day, his father at his office in the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank and his mother doing her charitable work or playing tennis at the Ladies’ Recreation Club.

  Tang squatted on the ground, fiddling with his bundle. Fifty years old, he had been cook and head servant for eighteen years and, as such, ruled the household. Ah Mee, crouched next to Nicholas, was fifteen years younger than her husband. She had joined the household when she was nineteen. At first, she had been the wash-sew-sew amah, the servant who did the laundry and repaired the clothes but, when Nicholas was born, his mother trained her into being the baby amah. From the end of his first month, she had looked after him, bathed and fed him, cuddled him and sung him to sleep, chastised him, spoiled him, taught him how to use chopsticks, taken him for walks in his wicker push-chair and, later, accompanied him to and from school. Next to Tang, Ah Kwan knelt behind a bush, scanning the city below. He had worked for the Holfords since he was Nicholas’s age. A fisherman’s son, his parents and elder brother had drowned in a typhoon: Nicholas’s mother had found him wandering the streets of th
e city begging, had taken him in and trained him.

  His thoughts moved to his parents. He tried to imagine where they were, what they were doing. He could picture his father in his volunteer corps army uniform and his mother in her nurse’s apron but beyond that his mind was blank. Every time he conjured them up, he missed them terribly and wanted them back. Perhaps, he thought with a flash of optimism, they were actually down in the Hong Kong Club. If the fighting had stopped, he reasoned, they might have gone in for a quick gin and tonic before setting off home.

  Yet, no sooner had this thought occurred to him than, without warning, a wave of intense fear spread through him. It was like nothing he had ever experienced before. A blackness of terror, it seemed to draw itself across his very soul.

  ‘No be afraid,’ Ah Mee consoled him, taking his hand. ‘Tang and me look-see you safe.’

  ‘You no worry. Be strong boy,’ Tang said. ‘You be strong boy, grow up strong man like your father.’

  ‘Do you think my parents…?’ Nicholas began.

  ‘Master and Missy, no problem,’ Tang interrupted optimistically, giving him a smile of encouragement. ‘When they come, we go see.’

  ‘You go sleep now,’ Ah Mee advised, putting her arm around Nicholas’s shoulders. ‘Tonight we go, no can sleep. Get rest now.’

  Nicholas curled up against Ah Mee and dozed fitfully. He was woken, in the middle of the afternoon, by an aircraft flying over the city, close to the mountain, the din of its engines bouncing off the sheer rock face above. Glancing up, he saw the dull olive-grey fuselage with the red circle of the Japanese sun painted on the underside of the wing. Beneath its belly was suspended a finned bomb. It made two passes overhead then flew away over the harbour.

  ‘That was a Zero,’ Nicholas said, adding a little anxiously, ‘Do you think he saw us?’

  ‘No see us,’ Tang replied with certainty. ‘He go too quick. We under bush.’