A Multitude of Sins

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘They killed them all! Killed them! Take me away. Oh, take me away!’ she sobbed, sinking to the floor at Adam’s feet, grasping his hands and then, as he tried to help her to her feet, his legs. ‘Oh God, help me! They killed them! Raped them!’ Her words were lost in a fit of hysterical sobbing.

  Raefe looked down at Julienne. She was still beautiful, despite the obscene way she had died. Her spicy red hair clung in damp, curling tendrils around her kittenish face, her full, soft lips were tranquil. He pressed the first two fingers of his hand against his lips and then bent down, pressing them against hers. ‘’Bye, Julienne,’ he said huskily. ‘Au revoir, ma petite.’

  ‘What are we going to do with Miriam?’ Adam asked, as she sobbed and clung to him.

  Raefe stood up, took one last look round the ward and the dead men bayoneted in their beds, and said: ‘We’ll take her with us to the Repulse Bay.’

  The scene he had just imprinted on his memory would stay with him for life. Whatever the outcome of the fighting now taking place, he made a deep, bitter resolve that the world would know of the infamy of the Japanese who had overrun the dressing station. ‘If I die,’ he said harshly to Adam, ‘make sure that what has happened here becomes public knowledge.’

  Adam nodded, determining to make sure no harm came to Miriam. She was a witness to what had taken place, and one day, maybe years hence, she would be able to tell her story and the perpetrators would find themselves on the gallows.

  It was a long miserable retreat to the bay. Hollis’s leg wound was severe and, though Adam bound it as best he could with pads he found at the dressing station, the blood was still oozing through, dark and thick, as they limped their way across the hills towards the hotel.

  ‘I don’t feel too good, old boy,’ Hollis said with difficulty to Adam as the long low gleaming-white hotel finally came into view. ‘I don’t think I’m going to make it.’

  ‘Of course you’re going to make it,’ Adam retorted grimly, grateful for the fact that his thigh had stopped bleeding and that the wound in his shoulder had proved to be not seriously incapacitating.

  ‘Help Corporal Hollis,’ Raefe said brusquely to Miriam Gresby, wondering how soon it would be before he was able to commandeer a car or a truck and storm a way through the Japanese-held centre of the island to the Jockey Club.

  ‘Sorry about this, Lady Gresby,’ Hollis said with a weak grin, ‘I never thought we’d get to know each other quite so intimately.’

  Miriam sobbed and allowed him to rest his arm round her shoulders and they traversed the last few yards of uneven ground and dropped down on to the road. It was blessedly clear.

  ‘Thank God,’ Adam said with heartfelt relief. ‘At least the Japs haven’t reached the bay.’

  As they limped towards the sumptuous splendour of the hotel gardens they were seen, and over half a dozen guests ran out towards them.

  ‘Jesus Christ! What’s happened?’

  ‘Lady Gresby! It is Lady Gresby, isn’t it?’

  ‘Give that man to me, I can support him.’

  The voices clamoured around them, and Raefe said tersely: ‘The Japs have overrun Brigade Headquarters at the gap. Are there any troops at the hotel? Any telephone communication?’

  ‘We have a platoon of C Company of the Middlesex,’ a middle-aged man incongruously dressed in a white dinner-jacket and evening trousers said, ‘and some naval ratings and a small party of Royal Navy Volunteer Reserves. About fifty men in all.’

  ‘Who’s in command?’ Raefe asked as he led his depleted party between the luxuriant flowerbeds that lay at the hotel’s rear.

  ‘Second Lieutenant Peter Grounds,’ another of the guests, who was helping to carry Hollis, said. ‘He’s very competent. He has everything under control.’

  ‘And the telephone?’ Raefe asked, desperate to communicate to Fortress Headquarters the atrocity that had taken place at the dressing station, and to reassure himself that the Jockey Club had not suffered similarly.

  ‘There’s a civil telephone link. Second Lieutenant Grounds is keeping in touch with Fortress HQ on it.’

  Raefe breathed a sigh of relief and stepped bloodily and dirtily inside the familiar opulent confines of the Repulse Bay Hotel.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  ‘We’ve had reports of other atrocities,’ he was told when he had made his own report. ‘The fifth anti-aircraft battery of the Volunteers was bayoneted to death after they had made an honourable surrender. The Silesian Mission at Shaukiwan has been overrun and the medical staff butchered.’ The second lieutenant eyed the ugly gash on Raefe’s-forearm. ‘You’d better get that seen to. We have a resident nurse here, a formidable Scotswoman, and also a couple of auxiliary nurses. They’ll soon sort you out.’

  Raefe walked slowly out of the luxurious lounge that was serving as a temporary military headquarters, and towards the room being used as a sickbay. For the first time since the fighting had begun, he felt unbelievably tired. There was no immediate danger now to send the adrenalin surging along his veins, no outlet for the bitter, burning hate that had consumed him ever since he had stood amid the carnage of the advanced dressing station. His orders from Fortress Headquarters had been precise. He was to stay at Repulse Bay, giving whatever assistance he could, and helping in the formation of sorties against the encroaching Japanese. If the island was overrun and there was no further hope of driving the Japanese back across the straits, then he was to avoid capture and make his escape to Chungking, where he would continue the war, giving help to British intelligence. He ran his hand through his hair. The word ‘surrender’had not been used, but it had been implicit. And he had categorically been refused permission to try to cross the island and reach Happy Valley and the Jockey Club.

  ‘Lizzie,’ he groaned to himself as he stepped inside the crowded sickbay. Ever since he had gazed down at Julienne’s mutilated broken body, he had been consumed by an emotion totally alien to him. He had been consumed by fear. ‘Lizzie, Lizzie,’ he prayed again to himself, his knuckles clenching white. ‘Please be safe! Please survive!’

  And there she was. Her grey cotton nursing dress was creased and blood-spattered, her lovely face was tired and drawn, but she was there, only yards away from him, her blonde hair coiled low at the nape of her neck, her smile reassuring as she sponged the dried blood from Hollis’s leg.

  ‘It’s going to need several stitches, Lance-Corporal Hollis,’ she was saying in her low warm voice. ‘And we don’t have a doctor.…’

  ‘Lizzie!’ He didn’t give a damn about Hollis’s leg. He didn’t give a damn about anything any more. ‘Lizzie!’

  She spun round, dropping the bowl she had been holding, the blood draining from her face.

  ‘Just a minute …,’ Hollis protested plaintively. ‘I don’t mind there being no doctor, but at least let me have a nurse!’

  She left his side, she left the upturned bowl on the floor, she took three paces across the room and, like an arrow entering the gold, hurled herself into Raefe’s outstretched arms.

  ‘Oh my love, my darling, my sweet, sweet love!’ he murmured hungrily against her hair, her skin, as he crushed her against him like a man demented.

  ‘If he gets that sort of treatment for a flea bite to his arm, why didn’t I get it for my leg?’ Freddie Hollis complained to the rest of the fascinated bedridden onlookers.

  ‘It’s because he’s a captain,’ someone said cheekily. ‘Captains always get special privileges?’

  ‘Wish I was a bloody captain, then,’ another voice chimed in. ‘I wouldn’t mind that sort of privilege.’

  ‘I can’t believe it!’ she said joyously, her face upturned to his. ‘I’ve been so worried about you! There have been such dreadful reports. Every time I heard of a Japanese advance or the massacre of a volunteer unit, I kept thinking that perhaps you were there. That you were lying out on the hillside dreadfully injured or even dead!’

  ‘Not me, Lizzie,’ he said, and the old grin was back on his mouth. �
��I’m like a bad penny. I always turn up.’

  ‘Kiss me!’ she said urgently. ‘Oh God, make me believe it’s true and that I’m not dreaming! Kiss me!’

  He lowered his head to hers and, as the wounded Canadians and Hollis clapped and cheered, he kissed her long and deeply, overwhelmed by the love he felt for her, knowing that she was his for life.

  ‘Very nice!’ Freddie called out to them weakly. ‘But what about my leg? If it doesn’t get stitched up soon, it won’t be worth wasting the catgut on it!’

  ‘Oh goodness!’ Elizabeth gasped, horrified. ‘Lance-Corporal Hollis’s leg!’ And she fled from Raefe’s arms, making effusive apologies to a vastly entertained Freddie and running fresh water and filling a clean bowl.

  ‘When you’ve finished with that reprobate, I have a slight scratch on my arm that needs loving attention,’ Raefe said, grinning down at Freddie who was gallantly winking up at him. ‘And you have another patient, too. Adam.’

  ‘Adam!’

  She spun her head round to him, and Freddie groaned in despair. ‘Never mind Adam Harland,’ he said with feeling. ‘If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be in this pickle. Adam, “First-to-the-Front” Harland will just have to wait his turn.’

  Elizabeth returned her attention to his injured leg. ‘Is he badly hurt?’ she asked tremulously.

  ‘No, a bullet grazed his shoulder, and there’s a peppering of light shrapnel in one leg.’ He paused and then said: ‘He’s quite a fighter. If he hadn’t come to our assistance, I doubt if I would still be alive.’

  She put the bowl and the sponge unsteadily down. ‘Do you mean that you and Adam have been fighting together?’

  Raefe nodded, amused at seeing how competent she was in a task so alien to her. ‘Yes – and, if I say so myself, we made rather a good team.’

  ‘I’m going to give you an injection before I start suturing,’ she said to Freddie. ‘It will help numb some of the pain, but it’s not going to be very nice.’

  ‘Oh God,’ Freddie said, raising his eyes to heaven. ‘I knew my luck would run out eventually.’

  Raefe watched as she began to put in the sutures. He couldn’t tell her about Julienne now. He didn’t want to have to tell her at all. He said quietly: ‘I’ll see you later, Lizzie. After you’ve had a chance to say hello to Adam.’

  She nodded, grateful for his sensitivity, wondering how Adam must feel at having had to fight alongside a man he felt so much contempt for.

  It was eighteen hours before she and Raefe had an opportunity to be alone together. She had been on duty all day and she remained on duty all night. It was only at six the next morning that she was able to leave the sickbay and the wounded Canadians who had been brought in from the gap. As she stepped out into the wide, lushly carpeted corridor, Raefe was waiting for her, his arm in a sling.

  ‘Your senior companion dealt with me herself,’ he said, sliding his free arm around her waist. ‘And a very efficient job she did, too. How was Adam’s leg? Is he going to have any problems with it?’

  She leaned wearily against him, rejoicing in the physical and emotional strength he afforded her. ‘No.’ She had cleaned and bandaged Adam’s leg and shoulder herself. It had been a strange experience, knowing that Raefe was only rooms away from them, that they were all now together in an intimacy from which there was no escape. ‘He won’t be able to fight any more. He can’t move quickly and he should never have had to walk so far over such rough ground. What he needs is rest, but it isn’t something easily obtained at the moment, is it?’

  ‘No,’ Raefe said, his arm tightening around her. ‘Which is why we must take our opportunities while we can.’

  In an hour he was to leave with a hastily assembled party of the Middlesex, their destination the Japanese-infested Gap. He did not tell her of his imminent departure. He wanted their lovemaking to be as joyous, as uninhibited, as it had been in the sun-filled bedroom of the home he doubted either of them would ever see again.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said, his voice thick with rising passion. ‘I have a surprise for you.’

  If anyone had told Elizabeth that an unoccupied bedroom could be found in the hotel, she would have laughed in disbelief. Ever since the Japanese had overrun the New Territories, nervous residents from all parts of the island had made their way towards Repulse Bay, regarding it as a possible haven of safety. There were now a hundred and eighty of them, cheek by jowl, with two hundred soldiers and with more stragglers arriving every hour. De-luxe suites were being shared by elderly American men and Chinese babies; by aristocratic Englishwomen and by the young wives of French and Portuguese businessmen. At night, every bed, every sofa, every chair was occupied. The idea of finding privacy was ludicrous. Until Raefe opened the door of the huge walk-in linen-cupboard and turned the key in the lock behind him.

  ‘Now,’ he said huskily, pulling a blanket from a shelf and tossing it to the floor. ‘Let me show you how very much I’ve missed you, Lizzie!’

  Afterwards, whenever she remembered their love making in the small lavender-scented linen-room, it seemed to her as if it had taken place in slow motion. She had kneeled facing him on the rough blanket, and he had tenderly touched her face with his hands, his forefinger caressingly tracing the pure line of her cheekbone and jaw. Then, as her excitement mounted unbearably, he removed her white nursing cap and the slides holding her hair so primly at the nape of her neck, and her hair had slid, heavily and silkily, over his hands, spilling down on to her shoulders.

  ‘You are so beautiful, Lizzie,’ he had breathed reverently. ‘So incredibly, amazingly beautiful.’

  He had kissed her forehead, her temples, his mouth tantalizingly skimming the corner of her mouth and bending to the nape of her neck. Then, with slow deliberation, he had begun to undo the buttons of her dress.

  ‘I love you, Lizzie. Love you,’ he whispered hoarsely as he slipped it down over her shoulders, exposing her shoulders and her brassiéred breasts, and she had risen in a smooth fluid movement, letting the dress fall to her ankles, stepping free of it, kneeling down once more before him for his adoration.

  Gently he had removed her white lace brassiére, cupping her breasts in his strong olive-toned hands, his thumb-tips brushing the rosy-red nipples, his eyes darkening in pleasure as he saw them harden proudly. He lowered his head to them, his thick shock of blue-black hair soft against her skin as he pulled gently with his mouth on first one nipple and then the other, his tongue lapping and circling, his teeth softly pulling. She heard herself groan in submission, felt the hot dampening between her thighs as exquisite chords of longing vibrated deep within her vagina.

  ‘Oh, Raefe, I’ve missed you so,’ she whispered as his hands ran caressingly down over her breasts to her waist, and then down over the full gentle curve of her hips and her thighs. Not until she was brought to near-insensibility with need of him, did he swiftly rid himself of his shirt and pants, easing her down on the floor beneath him. Restraining his own passion with iron self-control, he lowered his head to the mound of golden curls between her thighs, his hands caressing her flesh as his tongue found the small pearl of her clitoris.

  She lay in an ecstasy of passivity, her arms stretched languorously out above her head, moaning with pleasure as his tongue moved slowly, hot and sweet. At last, when he could bear no more, he covered her body with his own, parting the lips of her damp vagina with strong sure fingers. ‘Oh God, Lizzie!’ he groaned as he entered her. ‘I love you! Only you! For ever!’

  They moved slowly at first, two lovers with an intimate knowledge of the other’s need, savouring every step of their climb towards a long-drawn-out magnificent climax. Her hands slid over his shoulders, up towards the nape of his neck, her fingers burrowing in his coarse black curls; their bodies would no longer allow them to halt upon the way. Her hips ground relentlessly against his, her breasts crushed against his chest as he drove deeper and faster into her. She heard his name on her lips, felt her back arch, her nails score his flesh as th
ey reached a mutual peak of earth-shattering cataclysmic relief, no longer two separate identities, but one.

  Afterwards she lay in his arms, tears wet upon her cheeks, and before he gently drew away from her she said softly: I’m having another baby, Raefe. I’ve thought I was for a week or two. Two days ago I was sure.’

  He looked down at her, his hair falling low across his brow, his near-black eyes brilliant with love. ‘This time it will be all right, Lizzie,’ he said huskily, his hard-boned face certain.

  Her arms tightened around him. The Japanese were advancing indefatigably; the world they had known was falling apart. And yet at that moment, lying in Raefe’s arms and sharing with him the joy of her pregnancy, she had never been happier.

  It wasn’t until they were dressed and the door of the linen-room was closed behind them that he gently told her of Julienne’s death.

  She had been too shocked, too grief-stricken for tears. ‘Oh, no,’ she had whispered, time and time again, ‘Oh, no! I can’t believe it! I won’t believe it! Not Julienne. It isn’t possible!’

  ‘I’m sorry, my love,’ he had said, holding her close, hardly able to believe himself that Julienne’s dauntless buoyancy was stilled for ever. ‘But it’s true. Miriam Gresby was a witness. And one day the Japanese who overran that dressing-station will pay for what they did. On the gallows.’

  He had kissed her and left her, knowing that she would have to come to terms with her grief herself. That he could not help her. She had gone white-faced to the room she was sharing with ten other women, and knowing that she would have to be back on duty in the sickbay by lunch-time she had desperately tried to sleep. But despite her physical exhaustion sleep was a long time in coming. She thought of Julienne, laughing and merry and dazzling. It seemed inconceivable that she would never see her again. Never hear her infectious giggle. Never again be dazed by her outrageous, good-humoured behaviour. And when she thought of Ronnie, living a life unsustained by Julienne’s irrepressible zest, she turned her face to the wall and wept.