Wuhan

By John Fletcher

A multi-stranded historical epic set in China in 1937, when Wuhan stood alone against a whirlwind of war and violence.
'Fletcher impresses in this searing debut... Fletcher makes all his characters realistic, even if they only appear briefly, and excels at portraying the horrors of war and the moral challenges it poses. Fans of J.G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun will be riveted' Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
1937. CHINA IS AT WAR.

Soldiers of the Empire of Japan sweep through the country, killing and displacing the millions who stand in their way. As vast swathes of the country fall to the invaders, Wuhan, an industrial city in the centre of China, is appointed wartime capital. While the rest of the world looks the other way, the citizens of Wuhan stand alone against a whirlwind of violence – transforming militarily, educationally, medically and culturally.

Their heroic efforts halted the Japanese.

Weaving together a multitude of narratives, Wuhan is a historical fiction epic that pulls no punches: the heart-in-mouth tale of a peasant family forced onto a thousand-mile refugee death-march; the story of Lao She – China's greatest writer – leaving his family in a war zone to assist with the propaganda effort in Wuhan; the hellish battlefields of the Sino-Japanese war; the approaching global conflict seen through a host of colourful characters – from Chiang Kai-Shek, China's nationalist leader, to Peter Fleming, a British journalist based in Wuhan and the prototype for his younger brother Ian Fleming's James Bond.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Jul 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781800249851

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W U H A N

W U H A N

JOHN FLETCHER

www.headofzeus.com

First published in the UK in 2021 by Head of Zeus Ltd

Copyright © John Fletcher, 2021

The moral right of John Fletcher to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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

ISBN (HB): 9781800249875

ISBN (XTPB): 9781800249882

ISBN (E): 9781800249851

Head of Zeus Ltd

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CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

B

OOK

O

NE

: T

HE

R

OAD

TO

W

UHAN

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

B

OOK

T

WO

: W

UHAN

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

B

OOK

T

HREE

: T

HE

R

OAD

FROM

W

UHAN

Prelude

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

History of the Non-Fictional Characters after 1938

Acknowledgements

Endnotes

About the Author

An Invitation from the Publisher

BOOK ONE

THE ROAD TO WUHAN

To Paula.

Nations stumble upon establishments, which are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design. If Cromwell said, that a man never mounts higher, than when he knows not whither he is going, it may with more reason be affirmed of communities, that they admit of the greatest revolutions where no change is intended, and that the most refined politicians do not always know whither they are leading the state by their projects.

Adam Ferguson, 1767

1

THE NORTH CHINA PLAIN. AUTUMN 1937.

Wei was a short, stocky man with a strong athletic body and sharp, observant eyes. Like all farmers he had a slight gait, as though his feet were trying to pin down the earth, his earth, as he walked across it.

It was just before dawn. While most of his family still slept, he was doing his first round of inspection. His farm consisted of six acres of thin interlocked plots and strips, set among a kaleidoscope of other farmers’ strips and small fields and paddocks. They stretched off – north, south, east and west – seemingly into infinity.

His crops were laid out in immaculate east–west rows, exact as any military parade. On one plot grew cabbage, on the next gaoliang, then the burdock which was almost ready to harvest, then soya beans. All his crops were entirely without weeds. His eagle eyes noted three sturdy cabbage stems which had been bruised by his eldest son’s clumsy hoeing. He would reprimand him for this, but Eldest Son worked with a willing heart.

Wei reached the strip where his wheat stood. Most of the crop had already been cut, gathered and threshed. The stalks stood against his courtyard’s south-facing wall, drying completely before being used for thatching. The hulled grain was stored safe indoors in huge earthenware jars.

The rest of the crop, already cut, was stooked on the open strip ready for gathering. Wei had already stored sufficient grain for the family’s winter needs and for sowing next spring. Which meant what stood before him now could be threshed, stored, then sold at market for a tidy profit when prices started to rise in late winter. He felt the ears. Still damp from the morning dew, but fat and ripe to his fingers. Farmers never feel more comfortable than when they have surplus grain in their storeroom.

He turned north to view his farmhouse, built within its surrounding courtyard wall. Already smoke was wisping out of the chimney which meant his second daughter, Cherry Blossom, was up and about her household duties. But then Wei saw something strange. Far, far beyond his farmhouse, on the very edge of the northern horizon, he caught sight of a dark sinister cloud. Lying low, crouching like a black serpent. What could it be? Farmers burning their stubble? Too early in the year. A thundercloud? He had never seen such a cloud in his life.

Puzzled, slightly apprehensive, he shook his head and continued his inspection. He passed a strip of millet, then rows of potatoes ready for lifting. As head of the family Wei bore sole responsibility for its well-being. His family consisted of his ageing father, his wife and six young children. It was his duty alone to protect them, to feed them, to secure their futures. If the farm failed, they would all starve.

But in some ways they were the least of his problems. Buried in the ground lay his ancestors, those who had farmed this land for countless generations before him. The Wei ancestors were never short of an opinion on when a crop should be planted, when harvested, whether a wedding was wise, should he buy another strip of land. In his prayers, Wei had to negotiate very carefully with them. They wielded great power in the afterlife, deciding who would be allowed to join them after death and who would be cast aside.

At night Wei worked while his family slept – repairing farm implements, mending furniture. Each morning he and his eldest child, a daughter, rose before dawn – he for his inspection, she to run errands in the village.

As he inspected his land he worked out mentally what work each family member would do that day. He and Eldest Son would transport the remaining stooks in for threshing. His son, aged thirteen, could only carry one at a time but he, Wei, would carry two under his arms and one strapped across his shoulders. He did not want to use the cart as two of the spokes on one of its wheels were rotting and could break if overloaded. He hoped to hold off repairs til he got money for his surplus wheat in the winter.

On the strip for family vegetables, most of them were past their prime and dying. The onions’ spiky green leaves had long since died and been laid to one side, ready to lift. His second daughter Cherry Blossom would carry them back to the courtyard and plait them. Meanwhile his second son would strip the older leaves from the burdock patch and, having carried them back to the courtyard, climb onto the shed roof. Second Son was only five years old but more responsible than his elder sister Cherry Blossom, aged eight. She could pass the onions and burdock leaves up to him so he could lay them on the thatch to dry. The fennel and garlic up there were dry by now, so they could pass them down, tie them in bunches, and hang them in the storeroom. He passed the family’s three walnut trees. Already their green-husked fruits were falling. Grandfather, while he was minding the two youngest children, could potter out with them and gather them up. Meanwhile Wei himself would get the long thin poles out of storage so the rest could be beaten down.

A family that is not working is dying.

He looked up at that cloud again. It still squatted there on the far northern horizon. He wondered if the rumours in the village were true.

*

Wei’s eldest daughter stood in the village street. It was empty. A lesser being than this sixteen-year-old girl would have panicked. Not Eldest Daughter. She stared ahead of her, calculating. The news needed to be told. But how? How could she say to her family what had to be said so that they would believe her and act on it?

In front of her, as the first rays of sunlight started to strike out from the eastern horizon, Old Man Chen sat in the street with his back against a wall, smoking on his opium pipe, shivering in the early morning cold. Behind him, on the wall, he had pasted the pages of a recent newspaper.

He and Eldest Daughter – known to everyone as Spider Girl – were the only two people in their whole community who could read. Chen had taught her. Old Man Chen claimed to be indifferent to what he had just read in the newspaper. But Spider Girl knew she must act.

*

Wei was approaching the most difficult part of his daily journey. Some green, grass-covered mounds which stood just above the earth. In their midst grew an ancient wild pear tree, its branches pointing arthritically towards the sky. It had already shed all of its leaves. Its tiny fruits had been pressed into the sweetest of juices.

Among the mounds, as he approached, he could feel disquiet, turmoil. Beneath the soil which held their bodies he could sense the spirits of his ancestors, demanding – some of them quite rudely – to be told what was happening, what was causing such great upset in the world above?

Wei hastily lit two joss sticks to calm their nerves but it had no effect. Perhaps they were trying to warn him of floods, a new plague, maybe even of troops? A civil war had been going on for almost as long as Wei had been alive – but always when the rowdy soldiers had turned up demanding food and wine and his women, he’d been able to slip them enough money to keep them going down the road. Perhaps his ancestors’ fears were connected to the rumours he’d heard in the village, to what Spider Girl had been trying to explain to him over the last few days but which he could not understand.

What was that black cloud?

Of all Wei’s many duties – to his land, to his family, to his gods – his greatest was to his ancestors. To keep open the communication, the good feeling between those alive in his family and those who had died within it. But for some reason now they were angry and perturbed. Why? Suddenly the strangest of all sounds rolled through the vast landscape. He’d never heard such a noise before. It wasn’t the shotgun his neighbour fired to scare away the crows. It wasn’t thunder. Then again he saw that mysterious black cloud moving, unwinding across the northern horizon.

Wei started to panic. He felt he must be with his living family. But before he left he stopped before a tiny mound at a distance from the others, close to the roots of the wild pear tree. The grave of his elder sister. She who had loved him, protected him from all things, who had died in a famine when she was only seven years old. His parents had decided to abandon her so that he, their eldest son, might survive. She haunted the land outside the farmhouse for several days, her plaintive cries pleading for help, but Wei had been forbidden to take food out to her. He did once but was severely beaten. She died and her body was left for the wild dogs to devour before he himself managed to recover parts of her and secretly bury them close to her ancestors. Now it was always to her that he revealed his greatest fears, his deepest feelings. Today she stood at a great, great distance from him. She smiled sadly. She waved to him. As though wishing him farewell.

Wei had never known such a thing before. He turned and hurried back towards his farmhouse. The land of the living.

*

Spider Girl was hurrying along the rough trackway from the village to their farm. It was imperative that she reached her father and spoke to him before he entered the gate to the family courtyard.

She hurried with all her young might, but she wasn’t very fast. Her gait was more like a waddle, a sort of slow roll. When she was only three years old a drought had occurred, leading to a terrible famine. Her mother was breastfeeding her newborn son, the family’s first son, Eldest Son, and her mother decided – quite correctly, as Spider Girl now understood – to withhold food from her daughter so that her father – who fed the family – and her mother – who fed Eldest Son – and Eldest Son himself would survive. Her father found out about this. There were terrible rows between her father and her mother. Her mother would not feed her so instead her father would drop food to her from his bowl at the table, slip her raw vegetables as he returned from the field. Spider Girl would not die as his elder sister had died.

She survived. But because of her near starvation she developed rickets – in her hips, in her legs. Hence her hobbling gait, hence her universal name – Spider Girl. She wobbled and shuffled just like a giant spider.

She saw her father, close to the courtyard gate, hurrying towards it. She redoubled her pace, pains shooting through her legs and hips. He was about to go through the gate. She cried ‘Father!’ He stopped, was obviously in two minds, but then decided to wait for her. Usually when he saw her he smiled. Not this time. He looked worried, drawn. Good, she thought, I can get through to him. She hobbled up the last few yards.

‘Father…’

‘What is it?’

‘Father, we must leave.’

‘What do you mean, leave?’

‘Father, the whole family must leave. Must pack food and shelter and our valuables and flee. The Japanese are coming.’

‘Not this again. We can’t flee. We can’t leave our land. The Wei family have never left their land.’

‘The Japanese Army are marching down from the north – their guns are firing, they are murdering all the people, every one of us, in all the towns and farms they come across.’

‘How do you know this? It sounds to me like rumours.’

‘Father, we must gather together all our belongings – enough food, clothing and money – and flee. They are marching from the north. They have flying machines, they have huge guns that can kill ten men with one bullet, they have great armoured machines. They kill all the Chinese they find, or they turn us into slaves and drive us til we die.’

‘Where have you heard this?’

‘I read it in the newspaper. The newspaper Old Man Chen posts on the village wall. Japanese soldiers compete with each other to see how many Chinese they can behead with their swords.’

‘But they tell these stories about every war. When the warlord marched towards us twenty years ago with his army everyone thought it would be the end, he would kill everyone, but we managed to do deals with his men – they took our money but not our land.’

‘They will kill us. The Japanese do not believe in heaven or morality any longer, Father. They believe in some European filth which is taught in their schools. That all human beings are descended from monkeys.’

Wei laughed. ‘From monkeys?’

‘Yes, Father,’ said Spider Girl, getting desperate. ‘The Japanese believe they have superior breeding to us, have become superior men, a master race, that we Chinese are only monkeys and rats they can kill or enslave as they wish. That’s what their filthy European science teaches them. They believe all men are animals. Therefore they can treat us like animals.’

She fumbled beneath her jacket, drew out a scrap of paper.

‘I tore this from Old Man Chen’s newspaper. Listen, Father. This is what a German man witnessed in Nanking. Our capital city.

Two days ago about thirty Japanese soldiers came to a Chinese house at #5 Hsing Lu Koo in the south-eastern part of Nanking, and demanded entrance. The door was open by the landlord, a Mohammedan named Ha. They killed him immediately with a revolver and also Mrs Ha, who knelt before them after Ha’s death, begging them not to kill anyone else. Mrs Ha asked them why they killed her husband and they shot her. Mrs Hsia was dragged out from under a table in the guest hall where she had tried to hide with her one-year-old baby. After being stripped and raped by one or more men, she was bayoneted in the chest, and then had a broken bottle thrust into her vagina. The baby was killed with a bayonet. Some soldiers then went to the next room, where Mrs Hsia’s parents, aged seventy-six and seventy-four, and her two daughters, aged sixteen and fourteen. They were about to rape the girls when the grandmother tried to protect them. The soldiers killed her with a revolver. The grandfather grasped the body of his wife and was killed. The two girls were then stripped, the elder being raped by two to three men, and the younger by three. The older girl was stabbed afterwards and a cane was rammed in her vagina. The younger girl was bayoneted also but was spared the horrible treatment that had been meted out to her sister and mother. The soldiers then bayoneted another sister of between seven and eight, who was also in the room. The last murders in the house were of Ha’s two children, aged four and two respectively. The older was bayoneted and the younger split down through the head with a sword.’

Wei shrugged. ‘Nanking? Where is Nanking? I have never heard of it. Listen, my dear child, these foreigners, these Europeans and Americans, are all liars. They will write anything to trick us, steal from us. You should not believe them.’

‘Father – why do you deny you’ve heard these rumours, talked to people in the village about them…?’

‘Who I talk to and what I talk about is my business.’

Spider Girl looked directly at him. Wei looked downwards. Hanging his head. ‘I cannot leave. I am head of the family. If we leave we could lose all our lands.’

‘If we do not leave we will lose all our lives. After the war we can return.’

‘But our neighbours may have taken our land.’

‘If they do not leave now, none of them will survive.’

‘But who will tend the land, produce the food?’

‘The Japanese will seize the land and farm it. They will fertilize it with our dead. Our kind will be known no longer.’

‘They will need someone to till the land, gather the crops.’

‘They and their great machines will do that.’

Wei still stood there with his head hanging. Spider Girl looked at him. She loved him so much.

‘Father,’ she said, pointing to the north, pointing to the long black cloud hanging and billowing on the horizon, ‘what is that? You must have seen it.’

He still stared at the ground. He shuffled his feet.

Just at that moment another strange boom rang across the landscape.

‘What is that sound, child?’ he asked softly.

‘The sound of the Japanese guns. The great big ones they possess which can kill ten, twenty people with one bullet. And they possess many of them. Look at the horizon, Father. That cloud is the smoke, the dust the Japanese soldiers throw up into the air as they burn and pillage all the buildings and kill all the people in their way. Those devils will be here in this village, in our farmhouse, by this evening, murdering and raping us.’

‘But where will we go?’

‘In the newspaper they say people should go south. They are gathering at a place called Wuhan.’

Still he looked downwards. Almost stamped the ground as he fought desperately to keep it under his feet. All the land he had toiled unendingly on since childhood to keep immaculate and fruitful to feed his family. It was slipping away.

‘When you spoke to them just now, Father, how were our ancestors? Were they calm?’

A look of sheer agony split his face. His whole body fought convulsively for its next breath. Finally it came. ‘If we desert them now, if we cease to worship and pray for them, they will cut themselves off from us for all eternity. We will be like lost ghosts.’

‘And what did the spirit of your elder sister have to say? Because I know you love her more than all the others.’

He paused. ‘She waved me farewell.’

He reflected a moment, then looked up at Spider Girl. He spoke to her quite calmly and with affection.

‘Why do you insist we leave, daughter? You must know that if we flee a great distance, your legs will not be able to carry you and neither will we. We will have to abandon you. Just as our family abandoned my elder sister.’

‘I know that, Father. I say it because I love you and my family above all else. I want you to survive.’ Then she smiled. ‘Besides, I have no intention of dying.’

There was a pause.

‘Firstly,’ stated her father, ‘I have some family matters I must deal with in our farmhouse. I’ll want you to keep away from there but work out in your head what we shall need for our journey, and who in the family should gather what. I will also think about such matters as I talk.’

He turned towards the farmhouse and ‘family matters’. The first ‘family matter’ he’d have to deal with was the fact that his wife was about to give birth to their seventh child.

2

Wei walked through the flimsy canvas ghost gate, hung in front of the courtyard’s main gate to confuse and keep out all evil spirits and ghosts. He walked through the main wooden gate itself and, stepping to the left, aligned himself on the exact north–south axis which precisely bisected his courtyard and farmhouse into eastern and western halves. He walked determinedly north towards his farmhouse.

Beneath his feet it was as though the whole earth was in revolt. It felt as though it was buckling and shaking, as though some great northern dragon was writhing and convulsing and jerking the lines which run southwards all across the earth. What was happening up there in the Heavenly North where all the gods abide? What chaos and dissension was breaking out among them to cause this upset? None of it stopped him, though. He kept doggedly to his course.

He passed the sheds and stable where the farm implements and livestock were kept, where the firewood was stored and the straw stacked. They would not take firewood with them on their journey – they could gather that on the way. The same with water. At the dead centre of the courtyard he passed the shrine to his ancestors on which their names were inscribed on tablets. They ignored him. He continued on his straight north course, passing the room on the left where his father still lived, the room on the right reserved for his eldest son when he came of age and started a family – the room he himself and his wife had first lived in when they were married. All the time he was running through in his head precisely what would be needed for their journey, who in the family he would choose to carry out each separate responsibility of gathering and packing all the many things they would need.

He came to the main entrance to the farmhouse. A double door opened into the large space of the kitchen. There was a smell of cooking so Cherry Blossom, his second daughter, was preparing food. Something nourishing for his wife. He could hear his eldest and second sons sawing planks in a nearby shed. His father, now elderly and not very strong, was sitting by the fire and telling Wei’s two youngest children a story about the legendary courage of Zhuge Liang and the wickedness of Cao Cao. Their two tiny mouths hung open in wonderment.

Wei turned to the right. Before him the double doors to his and his wife’s bedroom. He opened them. Cherry Blossom was gently feeding her mother some gruel from a bowl with a duck spoon, leaning over her as she lay on the bed. Seeing him she put the bowl and spoon down and hurried from the room, shutting the doors. Wei stared at his wife as she lay on the bed he himself had been born in. Beneath it lay his birth caul, buried by his father to celebrate his birth. Beside it the caul of his eldest son, buried by himself, and the cauls of his father, grandfather and all the Wei family’s firstborn ancestors back til…

Wei shook himself and looked at his wife. She was on her back, her legs moving slowly back and forth to relieve the pains in her back. Very pregnant, she was staring directly at him. He saw she knew something was about to happen. She was already marshalling her arguments.

‘Good morning, wife. How are you?’

‘I am not too bad. As always my back has started aching. What are those strange sounds from the north?’

‘Wife, you and I must talk. Now. On grave matters. The sounds you hear are explosions from the guns of the Japanese Army that is marching directly towards our village.’

‘I see you’ve been listening to our eldest daughter with her mindless gossip.’

‘I can see the dust clouds of their army on the northern horizon. See the flashes and explosions of their guns. My dear wife, with a heavy, heavy heart, I have decided – awful as the time is, especially for you – that for our safety we, the whole family, must leave immediately.’

She sat straight up, her arms behind her, supporting her.

‘What? Leave this land? Our land? Which your family has farmed for a thousand years?’

‘Yes. There are many terrible and true stories of these devils’ savagery towards our people. I have heard this not only from our eldest daughter and her newspapers but from people in the village.’

‘They always speak nonsense when armies approach us. They said the same when the warlord came twenty years ago. According to my great grandmother there was the same talk when the mad Taipings invaded us seventy years ago. A few men killed, some women raped, we shall endure them. People only spread these rumours because they hope gullible people will desert their lands and they can take them over.’

‘I have been thinking about all this for several days. Yesterday I spoke secretly to my cousin over the hill.’

‘Has he decided to leave?’

‘No.’

‘Has anyone else in the village decided to leave?’

‘No – but that is unimportant. This is my decision. As I was saying, I spoke to my cousin and he said that if we left – I had not decided then – he would tend and protect my land, and if we had not returned after twelve months he would take our land as his own.’

‘Your land! The land you love! The land you put every second of your life into caring for and nurturing. You are the most revered farmer in this village. Every year at our festival the village honours your merit by giving you senior duties in its rituals and dances and speeches. It is said you have a wise heart. Villagers come to you to settle their disputes. You are deserting what you, your ancestors have built up over a thousand years? What will be their judgement on your desertion of their sacred, living land? Who will kneel at their graves and tell them the latest news? Have you told them of your decision yet?’

Wei didn’t know how to answer this. But suddenly there were two of those loud, ominous explosions from the north. A silence fell between them.

Wei sympathized with his wife. He understood why she argued this way. At the moment she had no standing among his family’s ancestors. They viewed her as an outsider, some sort of interloper, and largely ignored her. It was only when her and Wei’s eldest son inherited and farmed the land that they would recognize her and hold her in esteem as his mother, that she would become seen by the family, both living and dead, as honoured mother and grandmother of the ensuing generations of Weis. If they left now and never came back, the door of the ancestors would be shut for ever on her; she would be doomed to become just another abandoned soul, hovering pitifully outside the ghost gate of the farmhouse. Just as his eldest sister would have been had he not secretly buried her remains.

His wife’s face twisted in fury.

‘It’s that she-witch our eldest daughter who’s been poisoning your mind isn’t it, with all her lies about newspaper stories? She does it because she hates me.’

‘She does not hate you, and she is not lying. She read to me from the pages of newspapers.’

‘She could be saying anything she wanted, just making it up, because you can’t read, can you? She is a witch. It all goes back to your mistake during the famine when she was an infant. You should not have fed her. You should have left her to die. A woman has no value and is easily replaced.’

‘Enough!’ Wei shouted. ‘I have made my decision. You will obey.’

For a second she looked at him, then bowed her head in wifely submission.

In a gentle voice he said, backing slowly out of the room, ‘Stay in your bed and rest, dear wife. We will carry you out when we are ready to leave and you will, of course, have the place of honour in the cart.’

*

Spider Girl was lurking in the courtyard behind the door waiting for him to finish. He joined her. They spoke quietly so his wife would not hear them.

‘We must get the cart up here at once to start loading,’ he said.

‘You’re going to risk its rotten spokes?’

‘I’ll do the best job I can repairing them. We’re lost without the cart.’

His eldest son was passing with a whetstone to sharpen his saw.

‘Eldest Son, you and Second Son get the cart up here immediately.’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘I’ll clean the cart all through,’ continued Spider Girl, ‘then I, with Cherry Blossom, will start cooking enough food – buns and dumplings – to keep us going for the first few days. I’ve already got her stoking the fire and filling the cauldron to the top with water.’

‘Good. How long do you think your food will last – before we have to start using dried food?’

‘About five days or so. But I’ll go into the pantry, sort out what grain and beans and seasoning and dried food we’ll need.’

With that, Spider Girl went off into the kitchen to start preparing the dough for steaming.

Eldest and Second sons were pushing the cart up the courtyard, shouting and competing with each other about who could push hardest. Wei did not reprimand them for endangering the wheel. Now was not the time. And besides, they had not damaged it.

He thanked them, then drew them away from the house and down towards where the ancestors’ shrine was. Rather than further upset his wife or have his father overhear what was about to happen it would have to be his ancestors who received the shock. Spider Girl had gone into the kitchen to start preparing the dough for steaming.

In a quiet authoritative voice Wei told his sons what was to happen. Eldest Son stared ahead, not fully comprehending what Wei was saying, trying to work it out in his head. Second Son stared at his father white-faced.

‘We are going to leave the farm, Father?’ asked his eldest.

‘Yes. Immediately. These soldiers are going to kill us.’

‘Leave our home?’

‘Yes. It is vital, so that we can live, that you must now do exactly what I tell you.’

Second Son was horror-struck too, but already behind his staring eyes Wei could discern flickers and frowns of thought.

‘I need you to go down to the stable, groom the donkey and water and feed him and the goat well with their best feed – I’ll want you to do that again before we leave… And press all the goat’s cheese so we can take it with us.’

‘Feed them twice in a day?’

‘Yes, and put the rest of their best feed into small sacks. Then get the old canvas from out of the small shed, brush it, then with the poles that slot into the cart for the roof and the ridgepole, bring them and the feed sacks up here. After that I’ll want you to go out into the fields to gather fresh fodder.’

His two sons still stared at him.

‘Do you understand me?’ asked Wei gently.

‘Yes, Father,’ replied his second son, leading away his still puzzled elder brother and explaining things to him as they went.

Wei rejoined Spider Girl outside the kitchen doorway.

‘After I’ve cleaned the cart, Father, I’ll line the floor with cloth, then get two cushions for mother, one for Grandfather, and one for the two tots.’

‘Yes.’

‘What are we going to do about Grandfather and the tots? He’ll catch on pretty soon that something is up, and when we have to tell him we are going to leave his home…’

‘I know. I’ll ask him and the children that while they are playing to kindly go down to the walnut trees and gather the fallen fruit…’

‘I’ll give them the noodles we didn’t eat last night.’

‘…and then gather some fresh spinach and sorghum leaves in the fields. I don’t want to tell him what we’re doing until the last minute. It will be a terrible shock.’

‘And ask him while he’s down there to say some prayers for us to the ancestors,’ added Spider Girl. ‘We’ll need his intercession for us with them.’

‘You’re right.’

They both turned together into the kitchen, Spider Girl to start kneading the dough with Cherry Blossom, Wei to gently persuade his father to take the children out to the walnut trees.

Three more heavy crumps came from outside, the third so heavy that they felt the ground lift beneath their feet.

Suddenly the doors to Wei’s bedroom flew open with a crash. From them – back straight as a ramrod, arms akimbo – issued Wei’s wife, looking imperiously from side to side, her pregnancy seemingly miraculously swallowed back into her body. Gone was her weakness, her sickness, her unwieldy bulk.

Lying on her bed and hearing the whispered conversations outside her window, the arrival of her two sons with the cart, the sounds and smells of extensive cooking from the kitchen had told her that her household was starting to run in an unusual way. The shaking of the ground from a shell landing some ten miles away had propelled her from her bed. If the family was in crisis, if this crazy plan of her husband’s to leave (instigated by the malignancy of her eldest daughter) was actually happening, then she – head of the household, who alone knew where everything was stored and how all things interlaced – must arise and organize such a complex task or everything would go widdershins. So she arose from her bed and advanced. The jolt of adrenalin within her body was so strong that all the normal operations of giving birth seemed to be put on hold.

At the sight of her Wei flinched, momentarily, but almost as soon managed a smile of welcome while simultaneously signalling her not to start making a scene in front of his father and the two tots. She was aware enough to read his signal and gestured the three of them should move outside.

‘Dear wife,’ said Wei, once they stood by the cart, ‘I did not expect you to get up from your bed. You are looking remarkably well.’

His wife stared beadily at Spider Girl.

‘I know exactly what game that evil daughter of ours has been playing,’ she said, pointing at her daughter. ‘Scheming to take over my role in the family. Running my household for you. Send her away now.’

Spider Girl knew immediately that she must withdraw, show her humility. Her mother ran the household. Had she been in her mother’s place she would have acted in exactly the same way. She and her father could still quietly liaise with each other to ensure that things were running effectively.

‘I apologize to you,’ Spider Girl said, bowing obediently to her parents, and then waddled off to the shed where the fabrics were stored, so she could brush the cloth she was to line the cart with and comb out all its lice eggs. While she was there she would stuff some dried hops into Grandpa’s cushion so he would sleep better.

‘What are you doing, husband?’ his wife asked bluntly.

As quickly as he could without irritating her, Wei explained most of the plans the family was carrying out, emphasizing again and again that the Japanese could be expected to arrive within a few hours and they must hurry. To his relief she agreed with most of their arrangements, only drawing the line when it came to Spider Girl’s role. She would take over control of the kitchen and the cooking, Spider Girl would be demoted. After she’d finished cleaning the cart and furnishing it, Spider Girl could prepare the dried food in the pantry and bring in herbs and condiments to her whenever she ordered them.

There was only one other matter his wife insisted on. That, before they left, all the family should go down to their ancestors’ graves and Wei should explain to them why they were leaving. Wei had been in two minds about whether they had time to do this. She was quite emphatic. She wanted to be certain the ancestors knew the decision to leave had nothing to do with her. Wei was glad she had made the decision for him.

She marched into the kitchen then into the pantry, shut the door, looked at all the family’s food laid out so immaculately, ordered in strict rows and stacks of which should be eaten at once, which would keep three months, six months, a year. All her own work. Now to be torn apart, plundered, destroyed in a moment of madness. For thirty seconds she wept. Then, with a grim, mean look in her eye, she marched out into the kitchen, sharply ordered Cherry Blossom to bring fresh herbs from the courtyard, and started using her strong forearms to knead the dough.

As Wei went to get his tools to patch up the cartwheel, he reflected that in fact it was better if his wife was in control there. Spider Girl had plenty of other things to do, and if little Cherry Blossom started to play up his wife would solve it with a swift smack round the head. Spider Girl could never run fast enough to catch her.

*

In the stable at the southern end of the courtyard Eldest Son slowly brushed the donkey’s hide. He loved this donkey – his gentleness, his patience. The donkey and the goat stood chewing their fodder, the donkey his dried sorghum, the goat her hay. Second Son was using a scoop to fill small sacks with the special feeds for the donkey and goat. The donkey’s feed was a mixture of leaves, herbs, some bark and a handful of thistles and blackberry leaves; the goat liked dried hay and clover, with a handful of hawthorn leaves. Second Son deftly looped and knotted the necks of the sacks with cord and stacked them by the doorway.

‘We must be quicker, elder brother, we’ll be leaving soon.’

Second Son was still trying to explain to his elder brother exactly why they were leaving and why the Japanese were so terrible. Neither of them had any idea who the Japanese were, but Second Son, always keeping an ear out for what his elders were saying, had worked out that they were evil and bloodthirsty murderers. He had heard the fear in their voices. As he worked he explained this patiently to his brother.

‘But,’ said his brother, ‘if an evil man kills another man, an executioner comes around and chops his head off with an axe or a sword. I saw it once in the village. There was a lot of blood. Why doesn’t an executioner do that to the Japanese?’

Younger brother wasn’t certain how to answer that at first – he was mainly wishing he had seen all that blood – but thinking about it he said that he thought that the Japanese were too strong and evil to allow any executioner to behead them.

Elder brother wasn’t listening. He stood lost in a dream, a shaft of sunlight streaming down from a hole in the thatch on to his head. Who knew where his brains were?

Younger brother watched him, then reached up and lifted down a tray of goat’s cheese maturing in the rafters. He started patting them into shape and wrapping them in basil leaves. The family would take them all.

Looking at his elder brother he suddenly thought that perhaps, with all this happening, this might be the last time the two of them would ever stand together in this stable, their favourite place, and do their tasks with their beloved animals. Perhaps they were all going to be murdered. He shivered.

‘Come on, elder brother, we’ve got to get the canvas and poles ready for the cart.’

*

When Spider Girl had finished cleaning the cart and lining it and the two boys had started spreading its canvas hood over it, Spider Girl went into the pantry to supply her mother with what she needed in the kitchen and start packing dried foods for their journey – soya (last year’s, because this year’s was still in the fields), green beans, lentils and peas. Jars of bean curd and pickled turnip. She took down the three dried and salted hens – they could hang from the side of the wagon along with the dried sorghum and spinach and strings of onions and cabbages. They’d need two bags of freshly picked potatoes and three earthenware jars of wheat. They would add to the weight of the cart she worried, especially with the jar of water.

While she was doing this – and hurrying back and forth keeping her impatient mother supplied with salt and pepper and herbs – her mother was kneading out dumplings of dough and then thumping them to stick on the inner rim of the cauldron so they would steam. Those that were ready she piled on a sideboard. They’d probably have enough, she calculated, to trade some on the road.

She looked around her kitchen as a general inspects his troops deployed for battle. They would be able to pick dandelion and sorrel leaves on the road for their salads. She’d chopped the heads off five chickens and, with a few deft slices from a large knife, skinned, gutted and de-feathered them. They were now boiling happily in the water strung from a wooden pole. She shouted at Spider Girl to bring in potatoes to boil – and pack some senna pods to help Grandfather with his constipation.

With Mother and Spider Girl so intensely preoccupied, Cherry Blossom chose this moment to slip off unnoticed and visit and enjoy her great secret. A secret known only to herself. No one else in the entire world knew anything about it. She slipped out of the back door of the pantry and ran down the narrow passage between the courtyard wall and the farmhouse. She’d hidden it under a pile of half-rotted timbers. She lifted them up and there beneath was, in an old wooden birdcage, her beautiful, her magical baby hedgehog. It was always pleased to see her, especially the piece of dumpling dough she held out on her finger, and the tiny bowl of goat’s milk she’d smuggled out.

For a moment she gazed raptly at it, then she heard Spider Girl call her. She carefully put the cage back in the woodpile, replaced the timbers. This was Cherry Blossom’s secret – no one else would ever know about it.

She went back through the pantry where Spider Girl was packing roast melon and pumpkin seeds.

‘Where’ve you been?’ asked Spider Girl.

‘Out for a shit,’ replied Cherry Blossom.

*

The boys had finished stretching the tarpaulin roof over the cart and had set off with a hand-drawn wooden raft to gather fresh sorghum from the fields for the donkey and fresh spinach, potatoes, carrots and cabbages for the family. The sorghum and spinach should be bundled for easier carrying, the carrots and potatoes washed and put in a sack with the cabbages.

‘And hurry,’ Wei said, ‘we have little time.’

Spider Girl was passing and he told her to kill the bees but keep the honey in the combs. ‘We can drain the honey on the road and trade the wax with a pedlar.’

He got himself under the cart and started to work on the two rotten spokes. No time to take apart the wheels and insert new spokes. Reassembling such a complex thing as a wooden wheel was the work of an expert and could take hours. He took four iron splints to act as braces on each spoke, and then tightly bound each splint where the wood was sound with strong wire, finally stapling the splint at one end into the axle and at the other into the wooden felloe of the outer wheel. He pushed the cart back and forth a couple of times. It seemed to hold, but he mustn’t allow the cart to be overloaded.

He hung a pot of pig lard under the wagon to keep the axle greased and a spare brace for the wheel. He went into the side shed and looked at all his tools and implements. Which must they take? Something for digging – a large trowel for shitting? But what if he had to dig a larger hole for…? He didn’t allow his mind to go there. So they’d need a spade – with a sharpened end which would be good if they met any bandits on the road. A short sharp dig with a sharpened spade would take their guts out. What had Eldest Son done with that whetstone? He fetched it from the sawing shed and slotted both it and the spade into a leather collar on the side of the wagon, then he hurried into the kitchen to see how his wife wanted the food packed in the cart.

*

Singing her song to soothe her bees, Spider Girl lifted the first skip gently and looked inside. With a drowsy hum, the bees slowly and surely went about their business around the combs. They liked Spider Girl and trusted her. Yet she was to kill them. She did not want to. All she had to do was hold the skip over a sharp fire, swiftly sear and kill the bees with the flames, then cut out the combs.

The family needed the honey for the strength its sweetness would give them and for its medicinal and antiseptic qualities, but she would not do it. Bees were not only good and fruitful, they were also powerful in the spiritual world. If they were killed outright – especially the Emperor Bee at the heart of the hive – bees would take their revenge on the family, they would bring bad luck on them. To avoid this would mean being stung quite badly, but if she just cut out some of the combs and replaced the skips, they could resume their lives and still feel generous to her family.

She stopped crooning her lullaby for them and instead gently hummed it – so that no angry bees could fly into her mouth. Then she started cutting the combs and it hurt a lot, but in a short while she had wrapped the dripping combs in wax paper and was gone.

The bees resumed their unending toil. She prayed for their future prosperity and happiness. They prayed for hers.

*

Three large jars filled with wheat and one with drinking water had already been placed in the front of the cart. Wei intended to have two buckets of water slung beneath the cart. They would be dirty from the dust and dirt thrown up, but good enough for the donkey and goat. Besides, Wei was expecting to be able to get plenty of fresh water on the road.

Between the heavy jars he tightly packed the bags of dried beans and peas, corn and flour that Spider Girl had prepared, together with a small sack of roast melon and pumpkin and fennel seeds. Also one of last year’s hazel and sweet chestnuts and walnuts. On top he piled their bedding and spare clothing, and the knives and chopsticks and bowls and small iron cauldron they would need for their cooking and eating. The fresh food that the boys would be bringing in from the fields and his wife cooking would be stored at the back of the cart amid the family. The cart groaned a bit. He looked sharply at the spokes – they were holding tight.

His wife shouted from the kitchen to get the garlic and fennel leaves off the roof. He shouted to Cherry Blossom so he could pass the food down to her and she could plait the garlic and tie the fennel leaves in bundles.

She came out and he climbed onto the roof to collect the food. He saw Grandfather and the two tots returning to the farmhouse and almost at its gates. He started to hand down the garlic when he saw something else, something to the north. The dark cloud that had turned into a dust cloud, made by the Japanese troops, was not only huge but now no more than three miles from their village. Apart from the crump of artillery shells, now he could hear the snap and crack of rifle fire and a strange high-pitched chatter of guns firing he had never heard before. The worst thing he saw, though, was at the very centre of the black cloud. As though glowering from the belly of some vast dragon, he caught glimpses of strange flashes and glints of bayonet and fire issuing from the fighting. He knew they must move very soon. As he threw down the remaining garlic and fennel to Cherry Blossom, he screamed at his two eldest sons – who were some distance off – to bring back the food they had gathered and lead the donkey and goat up immediately from the lower courtyard.

He vaulted down from the roof and ran into the farmhouse. There was something strange and very important he had to do.

*

Their bedroom door was bolted behind them. His wife, not pleased with what they were doing, angrily worked to loosen a brick from the wall above their bed with a hammer and chisel. He was using a crowbar to lift a flagstone.

Farmers had little wealth, but what they did have they tended to hide in their own buildings and lands, rather than risk entrusting it to the hands of slippery merchants or, even worse, banks. But it did make them vulnerable to bandits – soulless, evil men who could come at night and torture farmers and families to try and extract from them where they hid their money. Wei knew farmers who had suffered this. Some had given away their secret places, some had died refusing. Fortunately it had never happened to him.

Wei could feel his wife’s anger. Indeed, it had been growing all day.

He took a bag of coins from under the flagstone as she pulled some cheap silver jewellery and a gold brooch from behind the brick. They were keepsakes given to her by her own family on the day she had been sent far away to marry Wei. She had never seen her own family again. He took them, stuffed them in with the coins and fixed the bag firmly inside his smock. He turned to go.

‘Husband – we must replace the brick with plaster – re-lay the flagstone,’ his wife said with contempt in her voice. ‘Anyone who comes into our house after we’ve left will know our hiding places? Can rob us easily in the future?’

‘We don’t have time,’ he said, reopening the doors. ‘If we return we’ll have to find new places.’

His wife would just have to swallow her anger. The situation was too dangerous.

*

He came out into the sunlight as Grandfather and the two infants came up the courtyard. His father was looking upset and disorientated. Wei knew that very soon he would have to tell his father – and those family members who did not know, including their ancestors – that the family was leaving.

‘Son, son,’ cried his father, coming up to him, the two toddlers rushing into the kitchen for food. ‘I have just seen a strange thing. It scared me.’

‘What was it, honoured father?’ replied his son.

‘This strange man. He passed us on the track while we were by the walnut trees. His hair was all awry and he stared ahead of him with this awful, stricken look. His clothing was torn and burnt. I asked him if he was all right, if he needed help? If he wanted he could come into our home and eat and rest? He ignored me. He brushed past me and walked on southward, as though I was not there. Then came two families I had never seen before, one with a cart and one all on foot, all carrying heavy loads, all hurrying past me with terrified looks, ignoring me. What is going on?’

Wei knew that the time had come. Now he must explain to his father, his ancestors, all the members of his family who did not yet know – the shocking thing that was about to happen to them.

‘Come and listen to me,’ he told his father and toddlers and Cherry Blossom.

As they gathered round him he stood himself deliberately in the very centre of his house, his farm, his world. Where the precise north–south axis of his farm and courtyard bisected the precise west/east axis on which his farmhouse had been built, 2,000 years ago. The most sacred spot in the farmhouse – where the coffins of the dead always rested before burial – where the head of the family stood to pass judgement and speak on the most important of occasions. He knew it would give what he had to say immediate authority. And as he stood he could feel the unrest running through his feet up from the south – from the shrine of his ancestors – and down from the north – from whence the Japanese came, and beyond them, from the abode of the gods themselves. There pandemonium and tumult reigned. It filled him with more dread than anything else. At such a time as this? All the gods fighting each other in Heaven. Abandoning all responsibility for their people.

Without letting his voice break, but firmly, he explained they were leaving. His mind was made up. His father howled. His ancestors howled. His infants howled til they remembered their food and recommenced chewing on it. Cherry Blossom turned sheet-white, stopped plaiting her garlic cloves, and rushed through the pantry.

‘Where are you going?’ asked Spider Girl.

‘Got to shit,’ said Cherry Blossom, disappearing into the back alley.

Now rural families, of necessity, because they all shat together haunch by haunch on a plank hung precariously above a communal dung pit, tended to be well acquainted with the vicissitudes of each others’ bowels. Cherry Blossom, Spider Girl reflected, had shown no unusual signs of any recent looseness, but this was the second time she’d been out to shit in half an hour. She followed Cherry Blossom into the back alley.

Meanwhile in the courtyard Grandfather was invoking their ancestors. The beauty of the farm. The untold centuries and ages that all the generations of their family had poured into their soil, its fruitfulness, its beauty. How he himself had taught Wei step by step to run their farm. His description was so beautiful, so heartfelt, it made Wei weep, but not change his mind.

‘We are leaving,’ his said simply, wiping his tears away, and lifted his father into the cart. ‘See, we have put down a cushion for you.’

‘But what of your wife, she is about to give birth?’

‘We have two cushions for her.’

In the distance the sounds of rifle fire and explosions were increasing. Eldest and Second sons were hurrying up the courtyard, Eldest Son drawing the goat and the harnessed donkey, Second pulling the wooden raft carrying the vegetables they’d picked.

‘Eldest Son, hitch up the donkey at once,’ shouted Wei, ‘then tether the goat to the rear of the cart. Water them both from the well. Everyone drink as much water as you can. Second Son – put those vegetables into the back of the cart without washing them. We do not have time. And tie those bundles of sorghum and hay onto the shafts. Eldest Son – make sure you harness the donkey tightly enough so he can’t bend his neck and eat it.’

He checked his wife had packed the fresh food, then suddenly a most bloodcurdling scream cut through the whole courtyard. Cherry Blossom’s scream. Followed by some very strong language from an older voice – Spider Girl’s. Both coming from the pantry. Wei hurried towards it. Cherry Blossom’s scream was nothing – she was always screaming. But Spider Girl speaking in a voice that was angry? That rarely happened.

He burst in on them. The two were standing in the middle of the floor, each tugging on the two ends of an old wooden birdcage.

‘I’m taking it,’ screamed Cherry Blossom.

‘You can’t,’ shouted back Spider Girl. ‘Give it to me, you little bitch. We don’t have enough room to carry it..’

‘What is this,’ demanded Wei, ‘what is going on?’ He looked in the old birdcage. To his amazement he saw a small hedgehog nonchalantly chewing on a melon seed.

‘He’s mine,’ shrieked Cherry Blossom, ‘he’s the most precious thing I have in the whole world, I am not leaving him to die.’ She started to wail. Wei did not have time for her dramatics.

‘I told her it was too heavy and too big to put