The Kindness of Women Read Free Page B

David frowned at me in his pointy way, unable to recognise me but puzzled why an English boy in a Cathedral School blazer had chosen this of all moments to roll about in a filthy gutter.
    The klaxon wailed, keening at the sky. Chinese office workers, women clerks, and hotel waiters were running down the Nanking Road from the Bund. An immense cloud of white steam rose from the Whangpoo River behind them, flashes of gunfire reflected in its lower surface. Around it circled three twin-engined bombing planes, banking as they flew through its ashen billows.
    A squadron of Chinese aircraft were bombing the Idzumo and the Japanese cotton mills at Yangtzepoo, little more than a mile from the Bund across the Garden Bridge. The boom of heavy guns jarred the windows of the office buildings in the Thibet Road. A tram clanked past me towards the Bund, its passengers leaping into the road. High above them, on the roof of the Socony-Vacuum building, stood a party of unconcerned Europeans in white tennis clothes, binoculars in hand, pointing out details of the spectacle to each other.
    Had the war really started? I was expecting something as organised and disciplined as the Military Tattoo. The planes lumbered through the air, as if the pilots were bored by their targets and were circling the Idzumo simply to fill in time before returning to their airfield. The French and British warships sat at their moorings near the Pootung shore, signal lights blinking softly from their bridges, a vaguely curious commentary on the bombing display downriver.
    Mounting my cycle, I straightened the handlebars and brushed the dust from my blazer—the officious junior masters at the school liked to roam the city in their spare time, reporting anyone untidily dressed. I set off after the empty tram, steering between the polished rails. When it neared the Bund the conductor dismounted, swearing at the driver and waving his leather cash bag. The tram’s warning bell clanged at the empty street, watched by groups of Chinese clerks pressing themselves into the doorways of the office buildings.
    A water spout rose from the choppy waves beside the bow of the Idzumo, hovered for a second, and then surged upwards in a violent cascade. Arms of hurtling foam punched through the air and soared high above the radio aerials and mast tops of the ancient cruiser. A second squadron of Chinese bombers swept in formation down the Whangpoo, midway between the Bund and the Pootung shore, where my father’s cotton mill lay behind a veil of greasy smoke. One of the planes lagged behind the others, the pilot unable to keep his place in the formation. He rolled his wings from side to side, like the stunt pilots at the aerobatic displays at Hungjao airfield.
    â€œJamie, leave your bike! Come with us!”
    The white fenders of the Lincoln Zephyr had crept behind me. David’s Australian nanny was shouting to me, her arms stretched across the shoulders of the nervous Chinese chauffeur. Steadying her straw hat with one hand, she waved me towards the car. Nurse Arnold had always been easygoing and friendly, so much more pleasant to me than Olga, and I was surprised by her bad temper. David had recognised me, a gleam of triumph in his eyes. He brushed the blond hair from his forehead, aware that he was about to make the first capture of our marathon game of hide-and-seek.
    The Idzumo was laying smoke around itself. Scrolls of oily vapour uncoiled along its bow. Through the sooty clouds I could see the tremble of antiaircraft fire, the sounds lost in the monotonous drone of the Chinese bombers.
    â€œJamie, you stupid…!”
    I pedalled away from them into a wall of noise and smoke. Glass was falling from the windows of my father’s building in the Szechuan Road. Office girls darted from the doorways, their white blouses speckled with fine needles. My front wheel jolted over a piece of masonry shaken loose from a cornice. While I straightened the pedals a