Elizabeth didn’t argue with her. She had met that note of obstinacy in Helena’s voice before and knew that arguing was useless. And, at the moment, there was no imminent danger. Whatever fighting took place, it would take place, as Ronnie had said, far to the north of the New Territories, in and around Fanling.
She went cold suddenly, remembering Melissa. ‘Oh my God,’ she whispered. ‘Melissa.…’
‘What about Melissa?’ Helena had not overheard Julienne and Elizabeth’s conversation the previous evening.
‘She’s out at the farm.’ She had no need to say any more. Everyone knew that Melissa had spent much of the last two years living in the isolated Elliot farm in the New Territories.
‘Does Raefe know she’s there?’ Helena asked sharply.
‘I don’t know.… He might do.… I have to go, Helena. I have to try to get in touch with him!’
She put down the receiver with a crash. Where could she start? Government House? Flagstaff House? Fortress Headquarters? Where was he likely to be? Hastily she dialled the number for Government House, and a harassed male switchboard operator answered the call.
‘Could you tell me if Mr Elliot is at Government House, please?’
‘I’m sorry, madam, there’s an emergency on. No private calls are being taken.’
‘This is very urgent! I have to know if he is there or not. If he is, then I can leave a message.’
‘I’m sorry, madam, but—’
‘Then, please could I speak to Sir Mark Young?’ Elizabeth said in her best cut-glass accent. ‘It is Elizabeth Harland speaking.’
The switchboard operator hesitated. He had heard of Elizabeth Harland and remembered seeing a photograph of her in the Hong Kong Times. She had been at a dinner, and the gentleman sitting next to her had been the Governor.
‘I’ll see what I can do, Mrs Harland,’ he said doubtfully. ‘Please hold the line.’
It was nearly ten minutes before the switchboard operator came back to her. ‘Mr Elliot is here, Mrs Harland, but he is in conference and is no way he can be disturbed.’
Elizabeth felt her anxiety begin to ease. ‘Please give him a message for me. Tell him that Mrs Elliot is at the farm in the New Territories. Have you got that?’
‘Yes, Mrs Harland.’ The switchboard operator was beginning to understand her concern. If the rumours flying around Government House were true, the last place on earth any woman should be was a farm out in the New Territories. ‘I’ll most certainly see to it that he gets the message,’ he said reassuringly.
‘Perhaps if you telephoned me back.…’
‘Yes, Mrs Harland. I’ll do that.’ The switchboard operator had also remembered that Elizabeth Harland was the stunning ice-cool blonde who had caused such a sensation at the Imperial a few weeks ago.
It was half an hour before he telephoned her back. The message had been passed on to Mr Elliot. Elizabeth thanked him and put down the receiver. There was nothing further she could do. She made two more telephone calls. One to Mei Lin, telling her that she would be staying in the flat in Victoria for the next few days and asking her to join her there. The other to her nursing station. There was no need for her to report for duty as yet, but they would appreciate it if she would stand by in readiness.
It was the strangest Sunday in Hong Kong she had ever experienced. There were no pre-lunch drinks at the Repulse Bay Hotel, no parties, no gossip, no water-picnics. All the men, including the Volunteers, were at battle stations. She wondered where Adam was. Alastair had told Helena that the Volunteers were being deployed on the island and not on the mainland. Presumably he would be stationed somewhere on the coast.
When she went for a walk in the afternoon she could see Royal Navy motor torpedo-boats out at sea, guarding the approaches to the Colony. The sight sent a shiver of apprehension down her spine. After so many years of speculation, it seemed that those who had always said the Japanese would eventually attack had been proved right. Certainly the Chinese thought so. They stood in huddled anxious groups, saying to her as she passed by them: ‘Is it true the Japanese come soon, missy?’ ‘Who look after us when the Japanese come?’
‘The Japanese will never reach Hong Kong Island,’ she said reassuringly, but the Chinese continued to look anxious. For years the Japanese had ravaged China. They knew very well what to expect if the Japanese also overran Hong Kong. The pictures of Japanese soldiers in Manchuria gleefully bayoneting Chinese prisoners had been widely circulated amongst the Chinese community.
Mei Lin arrived at tea-time, not asking where Raefe was or why Elizabeth had decided to spend the next few days in Victoria. She immediately began to prepare a light meal for Elizabeth, grateful that she hadn’t been left in isolation on the east coast.
In the evening Elizabeth read through a Moszkowski score and then, unable to concentrate properly, she wandered over to the windows, throwing them open and stepping out on to the veranda, looking down over the rooftops of Victoria to the silk-black bay. The evening was warm and scented, with hardly a breath of air, the setting sun a riot of crimson and vermilion and vivid streaks of yellow, the stillness unpleasantly reminiscent of the threatening calm before a typhoon. She returned to the music score, trying not to wonder where Raefe was, where Adam was. In a few days, if the experts were to be believed, the Japanese would have attacked and been repulsed and life would return to normal. She could only pray that, when it did so, Raefe and Adam, and Alastair and Tom and Ronnie would all be safe.
She slept restlessly, disturbed by the heat and the atmosphere of waiting and watching. At seven o’clock, after lying awake for two hours, she gave up all hope of further sleep and, wrapping a cotton dressing-gown over her nightdress, she wandered into the sitting-room, drawing back the curtains and looking once more out across the bay.
‘Would you like coffee and scrambled egg, missy?’ Mei Lin asked, hurrying from her own room to be of service.
‘No eggs, Mei Lin. Just coffee and toast, please.’
At seven-thirty Mei Lin hurried down into the street to buy the morning paper. This task was usually that of the houseboy, but as he was still in the main house, and as Mrs Elliot had not asked that he remove himself to Victoria, it was a task she happily imposed on herself. When she arrived back at the flat, she was breathless and terrified.
‘We are at war, missy! We are at war with Japan!’
Elizabeth snatched the newspaper, but the only reference to Japan was a small paragraph on the front page reporting that Japanese transport ships had been sighted off Thailand.
‘Not the paper, missy!’ Mei Lin gasped, trembling violently. ‘A policeman told me. He say we’ve been at war with Japan since quarter to five this morning!’
Elizabeth dropped the paper. If it were true, then she had to report immediately to her nursing station. ‘Make some more coffee, Mei Lin,’ she said, hurrying into the bedroom and quickly scrambling out of her dressing-gown and nightdress. ‘I’m going straight to the Jockey Club. I want you to stay here, do you understand?’
It had been arranged months ago that the Jockey Club would serve as a relief hospital. At least it wasn’t far to drive.
‘Yes, missy, anything you say, missy,’ Mei Lin said, bringing the coffee into the bedroom. ‘Do you think—?’
A thunderous noise ripped through the still morning air. The coffee-cup crashed to the floor, steaming-hot liquid seeping into the carpet.
‘They’re coming, missy!’ Mei Lin screamed, pressing her hands over her ears. ‘Oh, what have we to do? We will all be killed!’
‘Don’t be silly!’ Elizabeth said sharply, bending down and picking up the broken pieces of china. ‘It’s only the air-raid warning. You’ve heard practice alerts before!’
Mei Lin began to cry. Not like this, she hadn’t. Not at eight o’clock in the morning. ‘No, missy!’ she protested vehemently. ‘The Japanese are coming! Look!’
She was pointing to the window, and as Elizabeth turned swiftly she was just in time to see fighte
r planes hurtling down on Kai Tak Airport. Her first desperate hope was that they were Royal Air Force planes on manoeuvres, but then the bombs began to rain down, sheets of flame shooting skywards.
‘Oh my God!’ she gasped, dragging on her skirt and her blouse. ‘Put your tin hat on, Mei Lin, and stay indoors!’
‘Don’t leave me, missy! Please don’t leave me!’ Mei Lin sobbed as Elizabeth grabbed her own tin hat and began to run towards the door.
‘You’ll be perfectly all right here,’ Elizabeth shouted back over her shoulder. ‘They’re bombing the airport, not the residential areas! Just stay indoors till it quietens down!’
She slammed the door after her, running out into the street She had left the Lagonda parked by the kerb the previous evening, having been too tired to garage it. Now she yanked open the driver’s door, pressing her foot down on the clutch, slamming the gears into first. She had been wrong when she had told Mei Lin that the Japanese were only bombing the airport. They were raining down on Kowloon now, columns of smoke billowing skywards. She thought of the hundreds of Chinese refugees cramming the narrow streets and fought back a sob of rage. The casualties would be appalling, and this was only the beginning. God only knew what was to come in its wake.
Chapter Twenty-Four
For eight hours there was nothing Raefe could do about the message he had received. When at last the strategy meeting he was attending drew to a close, it was ten o’clock at night. He requisitioned a jeep and, ignoring the request that he remain at Government House throughout the night he drove at high speed through the darkened streets towards the ferry.
He knew that the Royal Scots were at battle stations in the north of the New Territories, and he knew that a platoon of Punjabis and the Volunteer Field engineers had been given instructions to blow all bridges that would give the Japanese access southwards. If the bridges were blows before he could return with Melissa, then the two of them would be helplessly trapped in the path of the advancing Japanese.
The eight-minute crossing seemed interminable. The minute the ferry docked he revved the jeep’s engine, pressing his foot down hard on the accelerator, careering through Kowloon’s narrow streets and making for the Tai Po road leading north. He was stopped over half a dozen times by army patrols, but his identity-card and rank as an intelligence officer ensured he was detained for only seconds.
Inky darkness pressed in all around him as he hurtled north. God, what a fool he’d been not to have warned Melissa not to leave the Peak. He knew she had finally made up her mind to leave for America but it had never occurred to him that she would return to the farm to collect any of her possessions. Mountain peaks pierced the skyline in black silhouette. At Pineapple Pass, just north of Tai Po, he was stopped by a large contingent of Royal Scots who warned him that the nearby railway line was soon to be blown and the road impassably blocked.
By the time he reached the farm it was nearly two o’clock. There were no lights on, no signs of life, but the minute his jeep approached the houseboys tumbled out into the darkness, their hands high in the air, certain they were being overrun by Japanese.
‘Is Mrs Elliot here?’ he demanded, vaulting from the jeep and running towards them.
‘Oh, yes tuan! Missy Elliot asleep. Take us back with you, tuan! Japanese come, but Missy Elliot no believe us!’
He ignored them, slamming his way into the house, taking the wide stairs two at a time, shouting ‘Melissa! Melissa!’
She stumbled from the bedroom as he ran down the broad corridor towards her. ‘What on earth …?’ she began, her hair tousled, her eyes still glazed by sleep.
‘We’re at war with the Japs!’ he said tersely, seizing her arm and propelling her back into the room. ‘Get dressed! The Tai Po road is about to be blocked and the bridges blown!’ As he was speaking to her he was rifling through her wardrobe, tossing a skirt and a sweater towards her.
‘But my things!’ she protested dazedly. ‘I haven’t finished packing yet!’
‘There’s no time now, not unless you want to ask the Japs to help you!’
She stared at him, realization of their danger dawning, and then she hurriedly began to slip her arms out of her négligée.
‘I’ll be waiting for you in the jeep,’ he said curtly, turning away from her. ‘Be quick, Mel! Every second is vital.’
The minute he was out of the room she slipped her nightdress over her head, pulling on her underclothes, trembling in her haste.
Raefe hurried down the stairs, calling for the houseboys.
‘Is anyone else on the premises?’ he asked them as they stood shivering in the doorway.
‘No, tuan, only us. Please, tuan, can we…?’
‘Get in the jeep,’ Raefe said tersely.
They obeyed with alacrity. Raefe followed them, revving the engine into life. Where the devil was Melissa? It was at least five minutes since he had left her. Just as he was about to go furiously in search of her, she came running out of the house, her hair still dishevelled, the buttons of her blouse undone, her jacket in her arms.
Even before she had slammed the jeep’s door behind her, Raefe was driving off, bucketing over the dusty track that led to the road, fearful that at any moment he would hear the dull blast of the Tai Po road being demolished.
‘When did you hear the news?’ Melissa gasped, pulling her jacket around her shoulders.
‘We haven’t yet, officially, but it’s no false alarm. There are at least two battalions of Japs only a couple of miles to the north. They’ll be fighting their way southwards within hours.’
‘Oh God.’ She held on tight to the door as the jeep rocked and careered around pot-holes and gullies carved by heavy rain. ‘Where is Tom? Do you know?’
He shook his head. ‘No. The Volunteers are all on the island, except for the Field Engineers. They’re out here with the Royal Scots and the Punjabis, demolishing bridges and making movement difficult for the Japs.’
The jeep thudded on to a smoother road surface, and Raefe pressed his foot down hard on the accelerator. No one knew he had left Government House. With luck, if the Japs held off till daylight, he could be back without anyone being any the wiser about his absence. Without luck, he would be court-martialled before the war had even officially begun.
‘How did you know I was out here?’ She asked as they thundered down towards Tai Po.
‘Lizzie phoned me. I was in a strategy meeting. There wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it for hours. Why the hell did you come up here alone? You must-have heard the rumours.’
‘I’ve been hearing rumours for over two years,’ she said defensively. ‘How did Elizabeth know where I was?’
He swerved to avoid a pothole. ‘She was at the Chinese Charity Ball at the Pen on Saturday night. Everyone was there, Julienne included.’
There came the sound of a dull explosion in the distance, and she sensed his knuckles tightening on the wheel. She bit her lower lip. He had known the risks he was taking when he drove out for her, and yet he had done so unhesitatingly. When Elizabeth Harland had informed him of where she was, she must have known what he would do. She hugged her arms, knowing that if she had been in Elizabeth’s place she would never have told him.
‘We’ve about another half-mile to go before we reach the pass,’ he said, and as he did so his headlights picked out great heavy rolls of barbed wire coiling across the road. He swore vehemently, slamming on his brakes, skidding to a halt. Melissa was thrown violently against the dashboard and one of the Chinese toppled from the rear jump-seat and into the road. The vicious wire was all around them and Raefe shouted at the Chinese to stay where he was and not to move.
‘Can we get free of it?’ Melissa asked fearfully.
Raefe yanked open the glove compartment. There was a spanner and a pair of pliers. A very small pair of pliers. ‘God knows,’ he said grimly. ‘Can you yank the sleeves out of your jacket so that I can wrap them around my hands?’
She did so, her heart in her mou
th as he began to work, inch by inch, severing the wire that was jammed up against his driver’s door, edging his way out of the jeep, slowly and bloodily cutting and clipping.
It was an hour before he furiously kicked the last remaining section of wire away. As he did so there came the sound of another explosion, this time behind them, to the north. Neither of them spoke. If it was the bridge over the Sham Chun that had been blown, it would make no difference to their journey to Kowloon. But if the blowing of the Sham Chun was a signal for the other objectives to be demolished, then they would find themselves on the wrong side of a mass of impassable rubble.
It seemed an eternity before Raefe said with relief: ‘Whatever the hell it was they just detonated, it wasn’t the railway or the road.’ In the light of his headlights the entrance to the pass loomed eerily, the troops still standing by like wraiths. They waved him down, and he skidded to a halt, flashing his pass.
‘You’ve only just made it, sir,’ one of the soldiers said respectfully. ‘We’re all set to blow the line the minute the word comes through.
‘Is the rest of the way clear into Kowloon?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Raefe pressed his foot once more on the accelerator. They were going to make it. Half a mile further on there was an ear-splitting crack, and the jeep veered violently out of control as a front tyre burst.
He fought down his rising frustration, bringing the jeep under control and bumping to a halt. ‘Will it take long to change the tyre?’ Melissa asked nervously as he sprang to the ground.
There was a moment’s silence and then he said savagely: ‘It wouldn’t have done, if we had a spare tyre, but it looks as if we’re the victims of a bloody fifth columnist.’
‘But we’re not in danger now, are we? I mean, the road is clear behind us and the Japs certainly won’t be bowling down behind us. Not with the Royal Scots out in strength.’
He had grunted agreement, his immediate problem being not the Japanese but his superiors who would soon be wanting to know where the hell he was.
A Multitude of Sins Page 45