Wuhan Read online

  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

  BOOK ONE: THE ROAD TO WUHAN

  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

  BOOK TWO: WUHAN

  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

  BOOK THREE: THE ROAD FROM WUHAN

  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 cour
tyard 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 a
s 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.’