Fragrant Harbour (14 page)

The hotel was eerie, with all the public rooms empty apart from staff. I found Masterson sitting in his office over a pile of papers with his head in his hands, not despairingly, but concentrating on his work. There was a cigarette in his left hand, in some danger of setting his hair on fire, and a glass of whisky beside the desk lamp.

‘There’s good news and there’s bad news,’ he said. ‘You’ll want the bad first.’

‘Very well.’

‘The Japanese have come over the border. They’re fighting through the New Territories.’

I didn’t know what to say.

‘The good news is that the Japanese have attacked Hawaii and sunk most of the American fleet. They’re at war with America too.’ I don’t remember what I said. He bent down to a drawer of his desk and took out the whisky bottle and another glass.

‘It won’t be Nanking,’ Masterson said. ‘It’ll be bad, but it won’t be Nanking.’

The next day I woke up in a room at the Empire finding that something had rearranged itself inside me during the night. I had to go and find Maria. I wrote a note to Cooper and asked one of the staff to deliver it to the Bank when he had a spare moment.

Then I packed my rucksack and went down to the Star Ferry. The harbour was a strange sight. The plan was to conduct a fighting retreat from the Gin-drinkers’ line back into Kowloon, and then to evacuate to the island. In accordance with that plan, every boat, sampan, junk, ferry, and dinghy which was crossing from Kowloon side was dangerously full of men and
matériel
,
ammunition
, little old ladies, nurses who were called to duty at St Matilda’s or St Stephen’s, every kind of food and supplies,
livestock
and sundries and fleeing relatives. But they weren’t the only boats in the harbour. All British ships had headed off for Singapore at the weekend, but there were plenty of Chinese boats, the usual family groups about their usual activities on deck, cooking and cleaning and smiling and generally pottering about. If they had been trying to send a message that this war was none of their business, they couldn’t have done it better.

Air-raid sirens were going off at regular intervals. Often a Japanese plane – the bombers now unaccompanied by fighters: no need – would pass overhead, either before or after dropping a stick of bombs somewhere on the mainland. It would be the island’s turn next.

I took an almost entirely empty ferry over to Kowloon and as I did so began to wonder how I was going to get to Fanling. When I woke that morning my resolution had been that I would walk there if I had to. In daylight and full consciousness, that began to seem a less good idea. I could hardly order a taxi to take me north of the main defensive line. I was unlikely to be able to hitch a lift with the army.

But that was what I did. From the ferry terminal I walked past the heaving, milling ruck of people wanting to cross to the island, past where the taxis and rickshaws would normally have been, towards the railway terminal. A number of lorries, some of them in army canvas and some commandeered, were surrounded by a large group of mainly Indian soldiers. I took a deep breath and walked up to the back of the man with the biggest pips on his shoulders. I cleared my throat and he turned around. I have always had a good memory for faces. It was the silent artillery officer who had sailed out to Calcutta with us.

‘Tom Stewart,’ I said. ‘From the
Darjeeling
. The chap who was learning Cantonese?’

‘I remember. Roger Falk. Bloody funny way to meet again.’

‘Bloody funny. I – I thought you were a Gunner,’ I said, feeling a mad need to make small talk.

‘On secondment to the Rajputs,’ he said, making an
explanatory
gesture towards the troops around him. ‘Bit of a cock-up really, they don’t have any artillery yet. We’re going to the New Territories.’

I said: ‘I don’t suppose you could do me a teensy favour?’

In the cab of the lorry, squeezed into the long front seat along with Falk, his Indian CSM, and the driver, we drove past Kowloon, past Boundary Street and into the New Territories, past a relentless flow of people heading in the opposite direction. People seemed to be carrying or pushing as many of their
possessions
as they physically could, on every kind of improvised
trolley
, cart, adapted rickshaw, bicycle with towing rack behind, anything. Women carried four or five bulging slings, bending forwards against the weight so that the black cotton sacks looked like multiple humpbacks. I think I expected panic, people
fleeing
in screaming terror, running for all they were worth. But it wasn’t like that. The refugees showed no emotion I could
recognise
and moved at their own pace.

‘Once we get up to Golden Hill you’ll be on your own. We’re going off to the right. The Punjabs are over that way, too. The Royal Jocks are on the left. A few patrols are up further north to give them something to think about and to slow the Japs down.’

Falk, with considerable delicacy, had not asked me why I
needed
to get to Fanling, and had not attempted to dissuade me. Perhaps, as a professional soldier, he knew that the defence of Hong Kong was a pointless gesture; so why interfere with
anyone
else’s irrational, dangerous, self-imposed errand? When I think back to that time I don’t know whether to feel more pity for the soldiers who knew what was going to happen, and knew that their lives were being expended in vain; or for the ignorant and deluded, who were at least able to tell themselves stories with a component of hope. (A popular fantasy involved a non-existent relief column being sent from the north by the Chinese army.) I suppose on reflection I feel sorriest for those soldiers who knew what was being asked of them. To give your life is one thing; to
do it for a gesture is another; but to do it for a gesture you know is meaningless is a desolate trick of fate.

Before long, the lorry stopped. The three vehicles behind us came to a halt also. The road was passing through a defile in the row of hills where the main defence was supposed to take place. The Gin-drinkers’ line was supposed to be held by at least 20,000 men, and was being defended by perhaps a third of that number. I could see a pillbox emplacement halfway up the hill on my right. I must have passed it dozens of times before without
noticing
. The CSM jumped down from the cab and banged on the side of the lorry. In the wing mirror I could see the soldiers beginning to debus. The NCOs were shouting in a language I did not
recognise
. A woman in black pyjamas on the other side of the road, who was pulling a kind of sled stacked with crates, stopped to take a breather and to watch.

‘Well, this is us,’ said Falk, who had stayed behind in the cab to bid me a private farewell. I think that although he did not know what was on my mind he was giving me a chance to change it. ‘It’s a fair step still to Fanling,’ he said.

‘Ten miles or so,’ I said. ‘I’ve done it before.’

‘Keep your head down,’ he said as he got out of the cab.

The walk, which I hoped to do in three hours, took me all the rest of the day. I began by keeping to the road, still moving in the opposite direction to the main stream of people, which was
thinner
than it had been nearer Kowloon, but still steady. Once or twice somebody crossed over to try and sell me something – cigarettes, a flagon of water, half a chicken. Three or four times a Japanese reconnaissance plane flew overhead, and a stir would go through the refugees. Some of them looked up, some moved to the side of the road in an act that seemed less a practical attempt to avoid harm than a form of superstition, like touching wood.

I had been walking for about an hour when a woman, stooped from the weight of the slings on her back, stopped in front of me.

‘Go no further!’ she said in Cantonese. ‘Soldiers!’

‘Where?’

‘Ten minutes.’

She rejoined her family group, who were looking after her with disapproval. Ten minutes; half a mile at best. On the right of the road about a hundred yards ahead of me a scruffy track

led to a hamlet. I slid down the bank by the side of the road and into the dry gully which ran alongside it. Bent over, I scampered along beside the track and then turned right to the little village, bending as low to the ground as I could while I ran. The village smelt of fermented fish and seemed to be deserted. There were no people and no livestock. If the Japanese came they would go into the bigger houses first. I went through a bamboo curtain into a hut-sized house with an enclosure for pigs at the back.

A very old Chinese man was sitting in a rocking chair facing the entrance. He looked at me without surprise.

‘I need to hide. The Japanese are coming,’ I said.

‘My family all left. I told them I’m too old to run away,’ he said. ‘Get into the pig-feed locker. It’s by the back door. They won’t look in it, it stinks.’

I took the old man’s advice. The back door – another bamboo curtain – led to the pig yard. There was a wooden locker, six foot by three by three, against the rear of the house. It did smell bad. I opened it, fearing the worst, but Cantonese frugality was such that it had been cleared out. I climbed in and pulled the lid after me.

‘Comfortable?’ I heard the old man call.

I couldn’t see my watch so I don’t know how long it was before the Japanese soldiers arrived. It was probably under half an hour. There were clanking metallic sounds and then, soon after, raised voices. They must have searched for only a few minutes, seeing the village empty and undefended. Then I heard voices in the hut. Two people and then a third, harsher voice, all in Japanese, apparently talking to the old man. The harsh voice repeated itself three or four times.

‘Go fuck your grandmother’s corpse in the arse,’ said the old man in Cantonese.

There was a brief silence and then a noise like an axe hitting wood, followed by a crashing and rolling. Then the Japanese voices resumed, at a conversational pitch, and faded as the patrol walked away.

I waited in the pig-food locker for a long, long time. When I tried to get up both my legs had gone dead.

The bottom of the old man’s rocking chair was lying against the bamboo curtain; he had fallen backwards and sideways. I
stepped over the chair. He was still in it. The sword had removed his head from his body, apart from a flap of skin at the back of his neck. His head was rolled back at ninety degrees, so that the top of his hair was on the ground. The floor of the hut had turned muddy with blood. His eyes were open. I closed them, filled my water canteen and left the village.

I was more careful after that. Whenever I could I kept to the gully by the side of the road. There were fewer refugees now. Anyone who went southwards from here would be heading for trouble, towards the Japanese soldiers advancing into Kowloon. Whenever I heard anything metallic, anything which could have been a gun or a sword or a canteen, I crouched over in the gully and hid. I thought of a proverb Maria had
laughingly
told me: ‘Of the thirty-six alternatives, running away is the best.’

At one point, towards dusk, I heard gunfire not far away, and shouting in what sounded like Japanese – I couldn’t tell. A short distance in front of me was an overturned cart which had spilled a consignment of rice over the road, and whose main body now hung over the dyke. I crept up to the cart and slid underneath. I thought I could hear the Japanese approaching; I thought I could hear booted feet, whispered orders, preparations for opening fire. I would think I was imagining things; then I was sure I wasn’t. The underside of the cart was humid and smelled of rice. I stayed there for an hour until it was dark. When I came out nobody was there.

I jogged the last mile or so into Fanling. My timidity had cost me the chance of finding Maria until next morning, if there was going to be a next morning. I was convinced that if a Japanese
soldier
saw me he would shoot me, but with nightfall I felt I now didn’t care.

There had been fighting in and around Fanling. When the moon came out of the clouds I saw that buildings had been hit by shells and gunfire, and one or two houses were still smouldering. A dead soldier in a uniform I did not recognise lay against the wall of a low outbuilding, his intestines spilled open into his lap and gleaming black in the moonlight. There was a single bullet wound in the middle of his forehead with a thin line of encrusted blood around it. His eyes were open.

I realised I had lost my bearings. The dark made all village houses look like one another. I knew I should find somewhere to lie down and wait for daylight. I went to the nearest building and saw that it was the side entrance of the school. I had been at right angles to where I thought I might be. I tried the door; it was open but something was blocking it on the other side. I shoved hard and it gave way. I squeezed through the doorway and found that I was standing over a dead soldier. The rest of the room was pitch-black. I took out a box of Empire Hotel matches and lit one. At first I could not make out what was wrong with the room; its floor seemed to be undulating and irregular. Then I knew: it was covered in bodies. Twenty or thirty British and Indian soldiers were lying on the floor, all of them – I don’t know how I knew this, but I did – dead. Another group of bodies, dressed
apparently
in white, was in the corner of the room, many of them half propped up against the wall. The match burned me and went out.

I heard a noise. It was an animal sound, a whimper. I struck another match and saw in the corner of the room a crouched Chinese woman in black pyjamas. She was crying. I stepped towards her, put my foot on a corpse, and fell forward over it onto another corpse. I tried to stand up but couldn’t find my
footing
. I had to step on a body to reach a patch of clear floor.

I crossed the room. The woman looked up. It was Maria. I took her in my arms. She was shaking and trembling.