“I haven’t shot Mrs. Dwight.” This busybodying missionary was one of the English widows who supervised the eight boys and girls in the children’s hut, all war orphans separated from parents interned in the other camps near Shanghai and Nanking. Rather than make sure that we had our fair share of the falling food ration, Mrs. Dwight was concerned for our spiritual welfare, as I heard her explain to the mystified camp commandant, Mr. Hyashi. For Mrs. Dwight this chiefly involved my sitting silently in the freezing hut over my Latin homework—anything rather than the restless errand running and food scavenging that occupied every moment of my day. To Mrs. Dwight I was a “free soul,” a term that contained not a hint of approval. Spiritual well-being seemed to be inversely proportional to the amount of food one received, which perhaps explained why Mrs. Dwight and the other missionaries considered their prewar activities in the famine-ridden provinces of northern China such a marked success.

“When the war’s over,” I said darkly, “I’ll ask my father to shoot Mrs. Dwight with a real gun. He dislikes missionaries, you know.”

“Jamie…!” Peggy tried to box my ears. A doctor’s daughter from Tsingtao, she was a year older than me and pretended to be easily shocked. As I knew, she was far more protective than Mrs. Dwight. When I was ill it was Peggy who had looked after me, giving me some of the younger children’s food. One day I would repay her. She ruled the children’s hut in a firm but high-minded way, and I was her greatest challenge. I liked to keep up a steady flow of small outrages, but recently I had noticed Peggy’s depressing tendency to imitate Mrs. Dwight, modelling herself on this starchy widow as if she needed the approval of an older woman. I preferred the strong-willed girl who stood up to the boys in her class, rescued the younger children from bullies, and had a certain thin-hipped stylishness with which I had still to come to terms.

“If your father’s going to shoot anyone,” Peggy remarked, “he should start with Dr. Sinclair.” This vile-tempered clergyman was the headmaster of the camp school. “He’s worse than Sergeant Nagata.”

“Peggy…?” I felt a rush of concern for her. “Did he hit you?”

“He nearly tried. He always looks at me in that smiley way. As if I was his daughter and he needed to punish me.”

Only that afternoon one of the ten-year-olds had come back to the hut with a stinging red forehead. Our real education at the Lunghua school came from learning to read Dr. Sinclair’s moods.

“Did you tell Mrs. Dwight?”

“She wouldn’t listen. Just because they’re kind to us, they think they can do anything. She’s more frightened of him than I am.”

“He doesn’t hit everybody.”

“He’ll hit you one day.”