He knew that the word would be through the whole ship in seconds. It was marked by the silence which hung over the deck like the smoke of a burning island.
He saw the seamen gazing up at the bridge, sharing it, as they had shared all the dangers.
Among them was the Royal Marine corporal.
‘Is that man a bugler, Number One?’
Kerr said quietly, ‘Yes, sir.’
Brooke turned to the voicepipes. ‘Stop engines!’ To Onslow he added, ‘Strike those ensigns, if you please. She’s shown what she can do.’ Onslow nodded, understanding.
The marine corporal appeared in the bridge, his bugle hanging at his hip.
‘Sir?’
Brooke said, ‘Today we lost a lot of good friends.’ He thought of the Wren’s hat floating on the water. He felt the way going off the ship, the bows butting into the sea like something solid. ‘Play the Last Post, will you?’
Then he did salute.
Kerr followed suit, as the familiar call echoed unchecked across the heaving water.
The last Sunset. Just for them.
Epilogue
Commander Esmond Brooke, D.S.O., D.S.C., Royal Navy, paused in the warm sunshine beneath the Cenotaph’s tall shadow and looked across the harbour towards Kowloon. It was the strangest of feelings, as if he were invisible, or seeing Hong Kong again through someone else’s eyes.
On every side there was bustle, noisy traffic, colour and the clamour he had remembered so clearly. There was rebuilding everywhere, some of the construction much higher than he had expected. He noticed that the Chinese workers still scorned steel scaffolding and preferred their hazardous-looking bamboo poles.
The harbour too was packed with shipping, as it had been six years ago when Serpent had first arrived here. Six years: it seemed impossible. Two years had passed since the Japanese had finally surrendered.
The misery and brutality of the Japanese occupation were still evident, but there was determination too, with men of skill and vision to restore the Colony’s prosperity and growth.
He glanced at a fussy pilot cutter as it headed for open water, to guide in yet another freighter or tanker. Perhaps it was the same cutter which had led the way through the shoals and amongst the wrecks and scuttled ships when Serpent had left for Aberdeen . . .
He turned and shaded his eyes to stare up at the austere Cenotaph, a twin of the one in Whitehall. So many names. There would be many more when the final cost was known. He thought of all the thousands and thousands of servicemen and women who were still being released into civvy street, when all their youth had offered them had been war. It would be a new world for them. He smiled. For me too.
He swung round, off guard, as a squad of sailors marched past and a petty officer bawled, ‘Eyes, right!’
So he was not invisible. He returned the salute and was almost surprised to see his white sleeve after all the months back in the Atlantic again, when he had been given a brand new frigate and had handed over his old Serpent.
She, too, had returned to the Atlantic, but he had never seen her again. It was as if she were insisting that it should be that way. All those familiar faces had gone to other ships, except for one, Ian Cusack, the gnome-like Chief who had stayed with her to the end.
A lucky ship: when many others, newer and more powerful, had been destroyed, Serpent had survived.
In 1945, within three months of the end of the war in Europe, Serpent’s famous luck had run out. Somewhere to the east of St John’s, Newfoundland, while despatched from a convoy to search for survivors, she had been torpedoed. There were no survivors.
Just a line on the radio news with the usual, ‘Next of kin have been informed.’
So the Chief had been with her even then. He still was.
Kerr had been promoted and given his own corvette, and had managed to come to the formal wedding at Portsmouth Cathedral. Even Kipling had been there, scruffier than ever, but grinning from ear to ear as, with Lian on his arm, Brooke had walked beneath the upraised swords. Two passers-by had stopped to watch, a young lieutenant and an even younger Wren officer.
Only for a moment Brooke had felt her hand tighten on his arm. It could have been them. When he had looked again, they had gone.
Brooke walked to the water’s edge and watched the tractors and bulldozers hard at work, reclaiming more land, covering the scars.
He glanced at his watch. She would be up on the Peak with her sister Camille. The great house, or what was left of it, was to be sold, the money used for a new wing for the hospital of which Camille was now the senior doctor and administrator.
Like many others who had lived under the Japanese occupation, Camille was withdrawn, distant even with her sister. Brooke could not imagine what she had endured: he suspected that the hospital had been her anchor. Her husband Harry, being an American, had been interned, put in charge of the sick and emaciated prisoners, doing all that he could without drugs or sustaining food. In the end he had died of beri-beri, one of those diseases of deficiency he had originally come to the Far East to study.
Brooke turned away to avoid further salutes from passing sailors. In six months he would be leaving here. Out of the navy. Once he would have dreaded the prospect: now he could barely wait. But a shore appointment in Hong Kong would make all the difference. Lian would be with him. No more separations. No more brave good-byes.
Then back to England. A friend had said, England will never be the same again, but at least it will be ours. And they would be together.
Another glance at his watch. She was coming. He could feel it.
He walked along the road and eventually stopped beneath the imposing façade of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank.
He was suddenly unsure. Nervous. Perhaps returning after six years would change her mind?
He heard the taxi pull to a halt and went to meet her. In a white suit, her hair hanging free because she knew he liked it, she stood watching him. Beside her and holding her hand was their daughter Charlotte, a tiny miniature of the lovely girl who was watching the man she loved.
She said quietly, ‘You were early. I knew you would be.’
‘Was everything all right, Lian?’
She touched his arm and nodded gravely. ‘You should not worry, Es-mond. England is my home now.’ She glanced at the busy street. ‘This will always be my country.’ She smiled, shaking away the mood. ‘Come now.’ They held hands with the child and together they entered a small leafy garden. There was a plain, simply carved memorial in one corner, with a brass pot of sand for joss-sticks, and there were flowers too, some fresh, others wilted in the sun.
In silence they looked at the square bronze plate. And remembered.
It was writen in English and in Chinese characters.
In memory of Charles Yeung, a patriot who died that others might live. Under Japanese occupation he risked everything to help his fellow citizens of Hong Kong. Eventually betrayed, he was captured by the Japanese military police and tortured for six days, after which, mercifully, he died.
May his courage, strength and vision live forever.
Brooke picked up his daughter and held her hand on the inscription while Lian placed sprays of orchids in one of the bowls. She bowed briefly, and he knew that she was praying. Then she stood up beside them and said softly, ‘You see, my father. We did come back.’
Brooke could imagine he heard him laugh. He would have liked that.
Together they walked out on to the street again, and Hong Kong offered them its welcome.
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Epub ISBN: 9781409069904
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Published in the United Kingdom by Arrow Books in 2007
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Copyright © Bolitho Maritime Productions Ltd 1994
Douglas Reeman has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
First published in the United Kingdom in 1994 by William Heinemann
First published in paperback in 1995 by Pan Books
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ISBN 9780099502357
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