Sunset (34 page)

‘No.'

She looked at the path to the front door and remembered how they had laughed when they were drenched in the sudden downpour, and they had gone to her small apartment and made love again and again.

It was only yesterday that they had been awakened by the
Serpent
's siren, and they had dashed from here to the ferry. There had been all those people in evening clothes, running about and staring at the sky when the planes had screamed low over the harbour and the bombs had plummeted down on Kai Tak airport. The enormity of what had happened had stunned everyone. Not only had the Japanese bombed Hong Kong, they had done the same in Singapore, and troop landings had been made on the Malayan coast.

Then, as people had gathered their wits to prepare for a siege, the real bombshell had exploded. The new enemy had also sent its carrier fleet to attack the great American base in Pearl Harbour. Without warning the Japanese had disabled many ships, and sunk others at their moorings.

Only yesterday
. She said, ‘The place is empty. Evacuated.'

She handed Kipling the key and watched as he pushed open the door, noticing that he unclipped his unusual-looking holster in the same movement.

‘I'll go first.' He walked into the hall and she followed close on his heels. The residents had left in a hurry. Even the army chaplain was gone.

She listened to the far-off gunfire. The army was there. They would stop the Japanese invasion. The staff must have foreseen all this. Even her brigadier had insisted that they would never let the Colony fall to attack.

‘Seems okay.'

She followed him up the stairs. There was broken glass halfway up: a window had fallen out during the bombing. The place felt deserted and there was a smell of smoke, perhaps from an air attack.

Kipling waited for her to open the apartment door with her key, and saw her hand go to her throat as she walked through to
the bedroom, the sheets still on the floor after they had tried to get dressed.

She looked at the open windows, the flapping blind above the veranda rail.
Oh God, Toby, I love you so
.

Sue glanced at the untidy lieutenant and did not know if she had spoken aloud.

‘I'll get my things. There's not much.' She looked at him again, the way he stared at her. Not hostile, perhaps not even curious. ‘Will there be an air raid, do you think?'

He took out some cigarettes marked
Duty Free – HM Ships Only
. ‘Christ, I hope not!' He grinned. ‘Sorry. No manners, they tell me!'

‘
They
are right!'

His grin broadened. ‘That's the ticket. Chin up, eh?' He became serious again. ‘If there is a raid, we get downstairs and round the back against those other buildings. This chicken-coop would collapse like a pack of cards if a bomb dropped too near!'

She dragged out some shirts and her uniform jacket with its solitary blue stripe. She was angry with him, but it helped her not to cry.

‘I was happy here, can you understand that?'

Kipling looked at her legs as she bent over a chest of drawers.
I'll bet
, he thought. But he was glad it had been Toby Calvert. It was not difficult to picture them here, in this bed.

He said casually, ‘I suppose so.'

She gestured to the other room. ‘There's some Scotch in there.'

‘Hell, why didn't you say so first?'

She jammed her few pieces of clothing into a blue grip and stared around the empty room. The picture of the shire horses was crooked, and she straightened it.

Just a room, Lieutenant Kipling might think. Sex and nothing more.

She touched the bed. ‘I love you, darling!' This time she did say it aloud.

When she turned she saw Kipling watching her, a full glass in each hand.

‘Here. Do you good.'

She thought of saying something clever and refusing the offer.
But she took a glass and swallowed some of the contents as he said, ‘Don't worry. They'll get you out. I heard mention of a ship. Certain people, you know?' He drank slowly. ‘Bloody good stuff. Not had anything like that since . . .' He tensed as a car backfired and said, ‘Getting past it!'

‘What about
Serpent
?'

He shrugged, as if it did not concern him. ‘The Skipper'll fix something, I expect. A good bloke.' He half smiled. ‘For a regular.'

The whisky burned her throat, but it was working.

He held up the bottle and shook it. ‘We'll finish this an' shove off, right?' As he refilled the glasses he added, ‘I hope it all works out, Sue. Toby and the Skipper are the two best blokes I've met after . . .'

‘After you lost your friend?'

He studied her. ‘He told you, did he, the old bugger!'

‘He likes you too.' She wiped her eyes with her fingers. ‘So do I, in spite . . .'

‘I know.' He picked up her grip and downed the rest of the whisky. ‘Let's go.' He watched her swallow the last of it, her eyes smarting. But not from the drink, he guessed.

She said, ‘I thought there'd be soldiers everywhere. Putting up defences like the navy're doing in the dockyard.'

‘The good old stable-door mentality!' Probably all in the Peninsula getting pissed, he thought.

She put on her hat and stared back at the open bedroom. Then she turned and followed him outside on to the landing.

Kipling was saying, ‘There are some boats waiting at a pier to offload my stuff from the truck . . .' He whirled round, his hand on his holster. ‘
Christ!
'

They both stared at the landing telephone, the bell of which seemed deafening.

Kipling relaxed, fibre by fibre. ‘Leave it. We're going.'

She was still staring at the telephone. ‘It might be for me.'

‘Make it snappy, then.'

She picked it up, the sudden silence even louder.

‘Hello?'

Sue recognised the voice immediately. ‘Where are you, Ruth?'
She covered the mouthpiece and whispered, ‘It's the army sister from next door!' She saw him frown impatiently.

She turned her back. ‘What's happening?'

Ruth Shelley's voice was clear enough, as if she were standing in the room. Like that day she had been sunbathing. But it was different. Flat. Unemotional.

She said, ‘They're here. At the dressing station. I just wanted to speak with somebody.' There was a catch in her voice. ‘And you answered, dear Sue.'

She felt Kipling was right beside her although she had not heard or seen him move.

Sue held the telephone between them and watched his face as the voice continued, ‘They have no idea.'

‘What, Ruth?
Tell me
!'

‘We had a lot of wounded brought in. The Japanese burst into the place. They bayoneted all the men in the beds, and there was shooting outside.'

There was silence and it was as if the line had been cut. Then she tried again. ‘They took my nurses. All of them, and raped them again and again. An orderly tried to help but they . . . they cut off his head.'

Sue felt Kipling's arm around her shoulders as she asked, ‘Can you get away?'

‘They locked me in here. Didn't know about the telephone.'

There were bangs and shouts, muffled screams too, like something out of hell.

Ruth Shelley said in a whisper, ‘They're coming for me now . . .'

The noise exploded on the telephone, sounds, blows and wild, inhuman shouting.

Then Ruth Shelley began to scream, piercing and terrible even as she was dragged away from the phone.

Kipling took it carefully and replaced it on its hook. Then he held the girl's arm, his fingers surprisingly gentle.

‘You okay?'

She stared at him, her face like chalk. ‘She never married. Never really liked men, you see?'

They both looked at the silent telephone. The stairway still seemed to echo to those terrified screams.

They emerged into smoky sunlight and found two armed soldiers standing beside the truck.

‘This yours?'

Kipling eyed him calmly. ‘
Sir
.'

‘There's an air-raid warning, er . . . sir.' The word seemed to stick in his throat. ‘So all vehicles off the streets, right?'

Kipling could hear the distant drone of aircraft. He guessed they would not come here. After what he had just heard and witnessed, he knew the main target would continue to be the island, the so-called fortress.

He said, ‘In that truck is enough high-explosive to knock down seven streets. Are you going to stand here guarding it in the middle of a raid?'

The soldiers looked at one another. ‘Well, I suppose . . .'

Kipling held out his hand to help the girl into her seat.

He said shortly, ‘Just be a sec.' He walked out of earshot and faced the soldiers again. ‘I see that both of you are carrying slung rifles. Safety catches on and nothing up the spout,
right
?'

One of them exclaimed, ‘Orders!' The other one asked angrily, ‘What's it to you anyway?'

They both gaped at the heavy Luger which had appeared in Kipling's fist.

Kipling said, ‘Both of you would be dead if I was an impostor. You will be anyway, if you try to stop us again!'

They were still staring after the truck as it rounded the corner, spewing out dust and smoke.

She asked hoarsely, ‘Is that really what's in the back?'

He grinned. ‘Sure is. Not dangerous though.' He glanced at her grimly. ‘Like women. If you treat 'em all right!'

At the pier where some naval boats were already gathered, Kipling leaned against the steering wheel and stared over at the
Serpent
's pale shape framed against the dockyard. Almost to himself he said, ‘Laughed at us when we came here. Another relic, they said. Threatened the Skipper, if he didn't toe the line. Well, it's bloody different now, isn't it?' The bitterness and anger was flooding out of him and he didn't try to stop it. ‘The bloke
you love, and I must say I've never envied a man so much before, is trying to fix up a bloody seaplane because
they
say it must be done. I'm getting ready to blow up a few things simply because it's all
they
can think of!'

He glanced over at the deserted streets, which were usually full of jostling people.

‘My guess is that the Japs will be where we're standing in a couple of days, probably sooner.' He gripped her wrist. ‘Go to that P.O. on the pier. He'll take you over to the yard. Keep your head down, eh?'

She stood beside the dusty fifteen-hundredweight, her bag in one hand.

He eyed her steadily, picturing the room, hearing the screams.

‘Remember what they say in this regiment?'

He saw her chin lift. Defiance, guts, pride. It was all there. She even managed a smile. ‘I know, Paul. You shouldn't have joined if you can't take a joke!'

Esmond Brooke entered the makeshift office in the dockyard and found Captain Albert Granville seated at a littered desk, hemmed in by both regular and field telephones in their webbing cases. The yard itself was a hive of activity, and with all but the smallest ships moved or gone from the harbour there were plenty of sailors to dig defences and build up barriers of sandbags.

Tamar
had been moved out to a spare mooring and Granville, with most of his staff, had transferred here to limited accommodation in offices and work-rooms.

Granville looked terrible. With so many others he had been invited to the great ball on the night before the attack. He was still wearing his white mess-jacket and the decorations he had brought out of temporary retirement for the occasion. There were stains on the sleeves, and his normally perfectly groomed hair was all over the place.

He pointed at a chair with a pencil, at the same time talking on a telephone.

But the chair was full of files, and in any case Brooke did not feel like sitting down.

He thought about Barrington-Purvis bursting into his cabin to
break the news of the attack, the banshee siren and the roar of bombs from the little airport.

Then the news of Pearl Harbour.

He had heard the Buffer say, ‘Well, that's brought the Yanks off the bloody fence for a change, eh, Swain?'

And Pike's savage retort, ‘But too soddin' late for
us
, isn't it?'

Granville dropped the telephone. ‘No sooner you're off the line and everything changes!'

He got up and walked to a big map of Hong Kong and the New Territories which his staff had already managed to mark with coloured pins and little sticky labels.

The Chief-of-Staff snapped, ‘The Japs are coming right through! If they meet any stiff resistance from the army they simply bypass it and mop up later at their leisure!'

Brooke recalled the few moments when he had held Lian in his arms while he had explained what was happening, and what might happen in the near future.

‘What about the evacuation, sir?'

Granville stared at him. ‘
Boomerang
was a mistake, a failure.' He waved his hand over sections of the map. ‘We've got the Winnipeg Grenadiers, and the Royal Rifles of Canada. They came directly from either their own country or Bermuda, untrained for this sort of thing. They don't even know this territory locally. Won't stand a chance. There's the Middlesex and the Royal Scots, but too thin on the ground for a prolonged siege. The Rajputs are up here . . .' He let his hand fall from the map. ‘You know what
they're
like.'

Brooke did not know. It was suddenly crystal clear. The whole line was crumbling even as they discussed it.

Granville shuffled through his papers and swore with disgust when he discovered that his cigarette case was empty. Then he seemed to hear Brooke's question.

‘We'll do all we can, of course. It's all happening so fast.
Islip
will be coming back.' He found a solitary cigarette and lit it gratefully. ‘Eventually.'