POST SCRIPT A year after HMS Alacrity bore me away from Taku Bar, I was with the family

(except for Doong Ji, still on active service in India) in a photographers shop in Brighton, England, having our picture taken. It was the last occasion we were all together before going our separate ways. This is that picture.

Tai-tai, seated on the right, is the only one not showing even the pretense of a smile. Easy to imagine what is going through her mind. She is bound and determined to return home to China with us in tow. Alas, for her, that was never to be. She spent her remaining years in England, all thirty-six of them, lamenting her exile from her beloved Tientsin. In lament, perhaps, but not idle. She became the French teacher, and a popular one, at London's Carshalton College for Girls. She updated her needlework skills learned at the Tsingtao Convent forty years earlier to take over as Betty's costumier, travelling with her to theatres across Europe. She died in 1983. Immediately behind Tai-tai stands Patrick, a Squadron Leader in the RAF. As a radar specialist he was among the lucky few to be evacuated from Singapore before its
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fall. It was his only close call of the war. Afterwards, he lived variously in Malaya, the Bahamas, the US, and Canada. It was not until 1976 that the luck of the Irish failed him. Soon after arriving in Edmonton, Alberta, where he had decided to settle, he was felled by lung cancer. Next to Pat is Brian. When war broke out he interrupted his studies at London University to serve with the Royal Irish Fusiliers. He saw action in the North African campaign. He was wounded in Sicily. After Germanys surrender he adopted England as his mother country. He died in London in 2008. Jocelyn stands at the center as well he should, for it was he who threw open his home to Tai-tai on her arrival from China, just as it was he who who organized the family gathering and photo session in Brighton. Having signed on in the Royal Navy as a boy in 1936, he was an old salt by the time war broke out. He saw action in every theater, mostly in cruisers. He was aboard HMS Swiftsure the rst RN vessel to enter Hong Kong at the time of Japans capitulation. Granted compassionate leave in February 1946, he made his way from Sydney to Tientsin to convince Tai-tai she must quit China. After the war, like Brian, he chose to settle in England, rst in London, then in Ross-on-Wye. Forty years later he moved to Spain which he rst saw close-hand while serving in HMS Shropshire during the Spanish Civil War. He died there in 2004. Agnes is seated in front of Jocelyn. Though half-blind, she is ashing the brightest smile of all. Why not? She is surrounded by her grandchildren all of whom have come through re and brimstone, privation and hunger, just as she herself had done forty-seven years back during the Boxer siege of the Peking legations. She died in 1950. On the left is Betty, smiling the condent smile of someone whose mind is rmly set on a career. She is a dancer. She is going on the stage. She sees herself rising above the mini-stardom she enjoyed in Tientsins Russian ballet. And she achieves her goal with ying
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colors. She retired to Blackpool, the popular retirement for stage people, where she could look back with pride on her tours of the Continent, Japan, Australia, the Middle East, but more especially on her appointment to appear before Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh in the 1960 Royal Command Performance when, as the exotic dancer Zari, she shared equal billing with Liberace, Nat King Cole, Sammy Davis Jnr, Vera Lynn. She died there of a heart attack in 2002. Tony is directly behind Betty. After the rigors of Weihsien, the rigors of austerity Britain was inducement enough for him to emigrate. Though the ve years Down Under were good to him, he headed back (with a wife and son) to the land of his fathers. He lived in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire until his death in 2005. I am the one between Tony and Jocelyn wearing the uncertain smile of someone with itchy feet. How right Tai-tais determination that I am a born wanderer. In the years ahead I will be pulling up stakes in St Marys NSW, in half a dozen London boroughs, in Wellington NZ, in Ontarios Hog Town before planting them nally on the treed slopes of Vancouver BC. I think I can safely say nally because thats where Deborah my wife of fty-ve years and I have brought up our two daughters and two sons. But is Tientsin really out of my system? I took Deborah there in 1984. I showed her our home on 20 Edinburgh Road and the one on 35 Sydney Road. I showed her the Min Yuan, Tientsin Grammar School (I couldnt nd St Louis College), DArcs Hotel, Astor House, Victoria Park, but alas, not that grand old citadel, the Gordon Hall; it crashed in ruins during the disastrous earthquake of 1976. But the tingzi still stands, the old tingzi. No kids playing kick-the-can mind you, just an old geezer seated on a balustrade, living out his memories. I was tempted, but didnt have the gumption to ask in my rusty Mandarin if he had ever been pestered by naughty little Foreign Devils shouting Tiger! Tiger! October, 2010.

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