Hazel Gaynor - The Bird in the Bamboo Cage

As we passed Miss Butterworth’s classroom, Miss Kent stopped suddenly. The door was broken at the hinge and I could hear a soldier shouting orders inside.

‘You can jolly well shout all you like, young man, but you will not place one of your notices on my desk.’

I recognized Miss Butterworth’s voice, although it sounded strained, and much louder than usual.

I knew I shouldn’t look. Like the blind beggar who’d died at the end of our street in Shanghai, I knew that if Mummy were there she would tell me to cover my eyes and look away. There are some things little girls aren’t meant to see, darling. Best not to look. But the temptation to peer into the classroom was too great. I looked, and immediately wished I hadn’t. I saw the soldier raise his arm. I saw him punch Miss Butterworth in the face. I heard the clatter of books and chairs as she stumbled backwards and hit her head against the edge of the desk. And I heard the panic and fear in Miss Kent’s voice as she ran forward, screaming at the soldier. ‘Stop! Stop it! Leave her alone, you brute!’

Despite the many things I couldn’t understand that morning, I knew, with absolute certainty, that in those few horrible minutes, everything had changed. It didn’t matter that we were a Christian missionary school, or that our fathers were well respected and our mothers well dressed. In the end, our parents’ occupations, our nice homes and clothes, the language we spoke and the colour of our skin, didn’t make any difference. We were at war now. Chinese, British, American, Dutch – we were all the same.

We were the enemy.

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