A Multitude of Sins

by Margaret Pemberton

  Tom shouldered his way through the crush towards a Royal Naval Volunteer seemingly directing operations. ‘This lady has lost her permit,’ he said urgently. ‘She needs to be able to cross immediately.…’

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ the harassed naval officer said. ‘No one crosses without a permit.’

  All around them children were crying, frightened by the noise and the crush and the unmistakable smell of fear.

  ‘To hell with that!’ Tom said furiously. ‘This lady is Lamoon Sheng and my fiancée! I want her aboard one of these boats, Lieutenant!’

  ‘I don’t care if she’s the Queen of Siam,’ the Lieutenant said, rapidly checking permits and waving thankful women through towards the launches. ‘She’s a Chink and she hasn’t a permit and she’ll have to wait, is that understood?’

  Tom’s eyes blazed and his fist clenched. Lamoon pulled desperately on his arm, begging him to come away, and then a deep voice shouted out: ‘Over here, sir! The Chinese are storming the boats!’

  Just as Tom was about to hit him, the lieutenant turned, forcing his way towards his junior officer, and Lamoon almost sobbed with relief. ‘Please let’s go away, Tom. I’ll cross later, when there is no longer a panic.’ Very faintly, above the noise and shouts around them, both of them could hear the distant sound of gunfire.

  ‘There isn’t going to be a later,’ Tom said harshly. ‘The Japs can’t be more than a couple of miles away.’

  ‘There’s room in this boat,’ the nervous underling who had been left in charge said to Tom. ‘And would you go as well and try to keep order? These women will have the boat six feet under the way they’re carrying on.’

  Tom didn’t need to be asked twice. He hurled Lamoon forward on to the pier, running with her towards the launch. He would take her to the Hong Kong Hotel. He was known there, and the name Sheng was known there. At the Hong Kong Hotel even in war, she wouldn’t be just another ‘Chink’. And then he would rejoin his unit, though how the hell he would ever find it again he couldn’t imagine.

  In the Kowloon Hospital the stench drifting in from the streets was almost insufferable. Bodies were beginning to decompose where they had fallen, sewage was seeping from bombed and broken mains, hundreds of tons of fruit and vegetables were rotting as the refrigeration system in the godowns broke down.

  Helena’s patients lay squeezed into any inch of space they could find. The lucky few lay in beds; others lay under the beds, on the floor, in the corridors. Operations in the two small operating-theatres were continuous. By Friday evening, Helena couldn’t remember when she had last slept, or eaten, or even taken a drink. Her uniform was stiff with blood, her finger nails caked with it. There was no more disinfectant, no linen for bandages, and their precious water-supply was dwindling fast.

  All through Friday night she tended the maimed and the dying and the dead, not thinking of Adam or Alastair, not even thinking of her children, knowing that if she did so she would not be able to continue. Instead she staunched hideous wounds, stitched gaping holes in arms and thighs, and tried to give comfort to young men who had lost legs and would never walk again.

  At 9 o’clock the following morning, the pitch of the noise drifting in from the surrounding streets altered ominously. There was no sound of bombs falling or air-raid sirens screaming into life. Seconds later there came the heavy tramp of marching feet and the doors were kicked open by Japanese soldiers, rifles at the ready, bayonets fixed.

  The Chinese began to scream, struggling to leave their blood-stained beds, to drag their injured bodies to a place of safety.

  The leading Japanese officer ignored them. He was grinning at Helena, his eyes behind his gold-rimmed spectacles lustful as they feasted on her Junoesque proportions and her magnificent bosom.

  ‘You come…,’ he said leeringly, jabbing his bayonet only inches away from her face. ‘You come with Japanese Officer. You find out what defeat for European women means.’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Raefe had spent the last week at Fortress Headquarters, helping the British interrogate Japanese informers, trying to elicit enough information out of them to enable General Maltby to assess where his preciously few troops could best be deployed.

  The main decision was whether to keep troops back in a central position, moving them forward in strength to meet an attack when an attack came, or to spread them out, trying to cover as much of the coastline as possible.

  The information that Raefe was able to pass on was not decisively helpful. He was told that the Japanese would land by parachute, at night, in the central area around Wong Nei Chung Gap. This information was disregarded as the Japanese had not yet, at any time, operated a bombing raid at night and the feasibility of landing an army of men by air over the treacherous ground of the gap was practically nil.

  A second informant said that the Japanese would cross to the island from the Devil’s Peak Peninsula, west of Kowloon, landing at Sau Ki Wan. The Devil’s Peak crossing was the shortest of all possible crossings; and, foreseeing that it was one the Japanese would want to use, withdrawing forces had been ordered to scupper ships in it, making the channel impassable.

  ‘They won’t be able to cross at that point,’ a senior officer said confidently. ‘They’re going to land on the south coast where we least expect it.’

  General Maltby did the best he could in an impossible situation. Keeping the vast majority of troops in a central position until an attack came was not a feasible option. He did not have enough trucks to facilitate the speedy movement of large numbers of troops to any one spot. Instead, he deployed the Canadian troops to the south of the island, the Indian regiments to the north coast, the Punjabis to the west of Victoria, the Rajputs to the east, overlooking the Lei Yue Mun Strait. The Royal Scots and the Middlesex remained centrally, as many units as possible being supported by the Volunteers.

  By the Friday evening Raefe knew that there was little left for him to achieve at Fortress Headquarters and he was thirsting for action. His orders were clear. As an undercover agent for the British, if and when Hong-Kong fell, he was on no account to allow himself to be captured. He was to escape, making his way to the Japanese-held mainland and then travelling through enemy territory to Chungking in free China, where he would help the Chinese form British-led guerrilla units. They would be an Asian counterpart of the French Maquis, doing everything possible to undermine and dislocate the authority of the enemy.

  Meanwhile, with the Japanese still making no move to land, Raefe’s sense of impotence was acute. ‘At least let me join a Volunteer Unit,’ he begged Landor. ‘I can’t remain buried away here any longer. It will only create suspicion about what I am really doing. And if word gets to the Japanese, I’ll have even less chance of making a successful getaway should the need arise.’

  Permission wasn’t given until Thursday the 18th. By then the Japanese were swarming all over the island, and Raefe found himself holding the honorary rank of captain and commanding a unit whose officer had been killed. And fighting by his side was Adam Harland.

  Elizabeth remained on duty at the Jockey Club, On Friday evening it had been announced on the radio that Prince of Wales and Repulse had been sunk off Singapore. She had heard the news with stunned disbelief, knowing that there was now no real hope for Hong Kong’s survival. The next morning she was greeted with the news of the mass evacuation from the mainland. By midday the Japanese could be clearly seen on the Kowloon waterfront, sandbagging buildings and setting up gun emplacements.

  When her long hours of duty came to an end, she did not grab what sleep she could. Instead, ignoring an air raid and almost constant mortar-fire, she drove through the wrecked streets to the flat and Mei Lin.

  ‘No, Missy Harland,’ Mei Lin said tearfully, ‘Missy Nicholson not come. Children not come. Oh, when will it end, Missy Harland? When will it be safe again?’

  There was nothing that Elizabeth could do. There had been no telephone link to Kowloon for days. If Helena was trapped there, she
could only pray that she and the children were, alive and well. If she wasn’t trapped there, if she had managed to join the other civilians in the previous day’s mass evacuation, then she could only pray that they would eventually turn up at the flat. That when she was next able to drive home she would find Helena waiting for her.

  As the week progressed the streets of Victoria became a nightmare. The bombing and mortar fire were incessant, the thousands of Chinese, refugees pathetically easy targets. The hospital was hit and hit again, even though a large red cross had been painted on the roof. One of the operating-theatres was wrecked, and one shell went right through the top floor, causing many casualties. On Wednesday, 17 December, fourteen bombers attacked the crowded streets of the Central District and the Wanchai.

  ‘They’re softening us up,’ one of the medical orderlies said darkly. ‘You mark my words, this will be the last day they content themselves with bombs and shells. This time tomorrow the bastards will have landed!’

  Elizabeth wiped the back of her hand wearily across her forehead. Once the Japanese landed she would probably never see Mei Lin again. An hour later, when there was a lull in the terrible bombing, she made a dash for her car, determined to make one last trip to the apartment. She would collect as much tinned food and bed-linen as she could transport to eke out the rapidly dwindling hospital supplies, and give anything remaining to Mei Lin.

  The roads were so cratered and bomb-blasted, so littered with fallen tram-wires and lamp-standards, that they were nearly impossible to negotiate. It took her nearly an hour to make the five-minute journey. As she neared the apartment apprehension began to cramp her stomach muscles. The area had received several direct hits. Fires were still raging out of control, doors and window-frames hanging lopsidedly from buildings whose frontage had been ripped away. An ambulance clanged vociferously in her wake. Air-raid wardens were climbing cautiously over a mound of rubble that had once been a human habitation.

  Her hands slid sweatily on the wheel; she felt sick and disorientated. It couldn’t be her apartment block. It couldn’t. She stumbled from the car, running across to the men still searching the smoking wreckage.

  ‘This your ’ouse, lady?’ one of them asked solicitously in a cockney accent.

  ‘Yes,’ she gasped, hardly able to breathe. ‘My apartment was here.…’

  ‘Ain’t here no longer,’ the cockney said unnecessarily. ‘Anyone in here when it caught it?’

  She shook her head, weak with relief. ‘No, I told my amah always to go down to the shelter.’

  ‘We’ve found one!’ another male voice shouted from a few yards away. ‘A Chinese! A girl! Poor kid must have been hiding under the table. Didn’t even have her tin hat on.’

  Elizabeth began to struggle towards him, slipping and sliding over the blasted concrete and shattered wood and the incongruous remains of her kitchen.

  The air-raid warden heaved a table-top away and bent down, beginning to lift Mei Lin from the rubble. ‘You take’er’ead, I’ll take ’er feet,’ the cockney said, hurrying to his assistance. ‘Cor blimey, what a nasty mess and no mistake.’

  Mei Lin’s golden skin was covered with a white film of concrete ash. Dark red blood oozed through the bodice of her blouse, her head lolling back at a grotesque angle as they lifted her free.

  ‘She your amah, luv?’ one of the men asked Elizabeth.

  She nodded, the tears streaming down her face.

  ‘She was a silly girl,’ the air-raid warden said as they transferred Mei Lin’s body to a stretcher. ‘Table-tops are no protection against Jap bombs. When will they ever learn?’

  The two men lifted the stretcher and began to carry it with difficulty back down over the constantly shifting wreckage.

  ‘Pretty though,’ the cockney said, looking down at Mei Lin’s still, white face. ‘Very pretty little thing she was.’

  Elizabeth slipped and slid in their wake. She had been pretty. She had been pretty and sweet-natured and touchingly loyal. And she had died alone, hiding in terror from the thundering volley of falling bombs.

  ‘You all right, miss?’ the air-raid warden asked as they lifted the stretcher and pushed it into the rear of an ambulance.

  Elizabeth nodded, her tears falling unrestrainedly. She had been tending the dying and laying out the bodies of the dead for over a week, but Mei Lin’s death was the first death to touch her personally.

  She watched as the ambulance doors slammed shut, crippled by fear. Where were Helena and the children? Where was Li Pi? Where were Julienne and Alastair and Ronnie? Where were Adam and Raefe? Were they safe? Were they alive and well, or were they, too, lying dead and maimed, the victims of a Japanese bomb or a mortar-shell?

  She walked slowly back towards her car. She had no way of knowing what was happening to any of them. She could only continue her work at the Jockey Club and pray fervently that the war would soon end. There had been rumours that the Chinese were sending troops to their aid. If it were true, and if they arrived within the next few days, then it was just possible that the Japanese would capitulate and that there would be peace by Christmas.

  The drive back to the Jockey Club was grim. Now that the raid was over, the Chinese had swarmed from the shelters and re-formed in long, disorderly queues for food. Nearly all of them looked as if they were in need of medical treatment. With sores openly exposed, their clothes often little more than tattered rags, they waited with rusty tins and battered bowls for the daily distribution of rice and beans.

  ‘We have been requested to send someone to help with the sick at the Repulse Bay Hotel,’ her nursing officer said to her when she returned. ‘Will you go? I’m afraid the military are unable to provide an escort, but it shouldn’t be too bad a drive if you go at dusk. There’s not much chance of a raid then.’

  The Repulse Bay. Elizabeth thought of the laughter-filled, happy afternoons she had spent there. ‘Yes,’ she said wearily. ‘I’ll go.’

  The nursing officer managed a small smile. ‘At least Repulse Bay won’t be under intensive air attack like Victoria is. It should be quite a picnic out there. I almost wish I were going with you!’

  Thursday had been an unusually cold and damp day, and Ronnie’s discomfort was acute. He hadn’t had a hot meal for twenty-four hours and he couldn’t remember the last time he had slept. Ever since ten in the morning, bombers had been flying over Victoria and even now, late at night, black smoke from the Anglo-Persian Company’s petrol and oil-storage tanks at North Point billowed into the air. The Japanese batteries in Kowloon had his position under almost constant mortar-fire. Of the seven men in his platoon, one was seriously wounded by shrapnel and another was out of commission with violent stomach pains and diarrhoea.

  ‘Nerves,’ Leigh Stafford had muttered disparagingly. ‘There’s nothing physically wrong with the fellow. He’s just shit-scared.’

  Ronnie didn’t blame him. He was pretty shit-scared himself At tea-time they had seen about two hundred Japs approaching the Devil’s Peak Pier. They were obviously unconcerned about the scuppered ships in the channel. The landing was imminent, and it was going to take place exactly opposite his gun position.

  ‘I’m ready for the little yellow bastards,’ Leigh Stafford said fiercely, conscious of the need to give a good impression to the younger man. ‘I’ve waited for this moment a long time.’

  The night was so dark they could barely see a yard in front of them. Heavy cloud obscured the moon, and thick black smoke from the still burning oil-tanks hung chokingly low. The rubber boats and rowing boats and sampans sliding out into the channel did so unobserved, shielded from sight by the high sides of the grounded merchant ships.

  ‘There’s something out there,’ Ronnie muttered edgily, his eyes straining into the darkness. ‘I can feel it in my bones.’

  ‘Blast those scuppered ships,’ Leigh Stafford said viciously. ‘I can’t see a bloody thing for them.’

  A huge flare of burning oil shot suddenly skywards, fleetingly illuminati
ng the channel, the scuppered ships and the scores of small craft edging their way round them.

  ‘I can see them!’ Ronnie rasped, adrenalin shooting along his veins. ‘There’s a battalion out there! And it’s coming this way!’

  ‘Position, men!’ Leigh Stafford commanded, forgetting his weariness, forgetting his hunger. ‘Get ready to fire!’

  Out of the darkness the black shapes of boats and men began to take on substance.

  ‘Targets!’ Leigh Stafford commanded, his voice throbbing, and then, as shadowy figures began to leap for the shoreline: ‘Fire!’

  ‘My God, there’s an entire Jap army down there!’ the corporal hors de combat howled. ‘There’s bloody hundreds of them!’

  ‘Keep firing!’ Leigh Stafford bellowed. ‘We mustn’t let them gain a foothold! For Christ’s sake, keep firing!’

  They kept firing, and for a few miraculous minutes held the disembarking Japs at the water’s edge. In the distance, at either side of them, they could hear the guns of the anti-aircraft batteries roaring into action.

  ‘We’ll soon send them on their way!’ Leigh Stafford crowed but, even as he spoke, more boats were sliding ashore, more men sprinting and leaping over the bodies of the dead and wounded.

  ‘They’re going to overrun us!’ Ronnie shouted as, despite the withering fire, heedless of their casualties, the Japanese swarmed on towards them. ‘There’s no way we can hold them!’

  A hand-grenade was lobbed through a loophole and just as speedily lobbed back again.

  ‘We have to hold them!’ Leigh Stafford shouted back, and then another grenade entered the pillbox, exploding and blasting them off their feet. Cement and plaster rained down on them. Ronnie could hear someone screaming and prayed to God that it wasn’t himself.