Chapter 6 - Rachel Granger

As Jim walks home he watches the crowd of people in the city streets, he comments on how it’s as if the whole city had come out into the streets, celebrating the takeover of the International Settlement. He describes the different people he sees: armed soldiers, Chinese gangsters, bar-girls in fur coats with their body guards. He passes a silent crowd watching the beheading of a man and women wearing peasant clothes and states how he thinks the Chinese like the spectacle of death as a way of reminding themselves how lucky they are to be alive.
He then sits himself down on a concrete bench between peasant women carrying chickens in wicker baskets. He noticed he is being followed by a young Chinese – probably a pedicab tout or a runner for one of thousands of small-time gangsters. He says how he knows kidnappings were common in Shanghai and suspected he was after his blazer, leather shoes, aviator’s watch and fountain pen. The youth walks over and reaches for Jim’s wrist but Jim knocks his hand away and sees him draw a knife from his inside his leather jacket.
But Jim runs away before he could seize his wrist again. The youth follows Jim as he runs through the city. As Jim stops near the check-point into the French Concession, the youth grips his shoulders but Jim pulls himself away and runs towards the check point shouting “Nakajima!” He joins the crowd moving through the checkpoint and for the first time realises how the Japanese, officially his enemy, offers his only protection in Shanghai.
He turns the corner into Amherst Avenue and it is deserted. He runs up the street to his drive looking forward to seeing his mother sitting on the sofa in her bedroom. As he presses the bell, he sees that a white stamped cloth with seals and registration numbers has been nailed to the front door.
But the house was empty – no one was in the servants’ quarters, someone had switched off the swimming pool and all the shutters of the air-conditioners had been closed.
He climbs himself up onto the wall and into the garden. He had played many games in the garden. He follows the pathway leading from the servants’ quarters to the kitchen door but it was locked. Beside the kitchen steps was a garbage compactor, a chute which lead into the kitchen next to the sink. He goes through it and shouts to Vera, his housemaid that he is home but no one answers. He walks through the house up to his mother’s bedroom where her clothes were scattered across the unmade bed and an open suitcase lay open on the floor.
Jim sits down on the bed and falls asleep, resting by the scent of his mother's silk nightdress.