The Great Fire (13 page)

He parked his borrowed car between a pair of Quonset huts in the military segment of the field. From those wings walked onto a stage where all activity was in that instant precipitated, as by magnetic force, far off at the water's edge — concentrated there in a black swirl seared by flame and in a frantic convergence of vehicles and men. Havoc first broke loose in silence and slow motion. But then the sound came in, of sirens, motors, and the low explosive roar. And a pandemonium of men running and shouting. And Exley himself started to shout and run, and heard the same cries, of 'God Almighty' and 'Jesus Christ,' from his own throat; until waved back by an airman in overalls, painfully sunburned, with an antiquated red flag in his hand.

'Enough trouble without you.'

An older man was halted beside him, in RAF khaki. 'Came in too low, hit the pile of rubble. The usual. The field's a death trap.' The smashed plane was blazing into a cloud of particles, the black reek, and the ash, now reaching them. They all streamed with sweat.

Peter Exley asked, 'Is it the plane from Shanghai?'

The older man, heavyset, said, 'Must be.'

Peter Exley heard himself say 'No,' like an obstinate infant.

The boy of the flag was also saying 'No,' brushing iridescent fragments from face and hair with his forearm. 'No.' He extended his flag arm, pointing it beyond Exley's head: 'There.'

Peter could make it out, the painted shape against the mountain: the machine coming in, silver, first descending, then rising abruptly, tilting, circling. Again, an illusory silence before the volume returned in a normal roar, with the red boy saying, 'That's it, there, the Shanghai plane.'

And the khaki man asking, 'What's the one, then, that bought it?'

'Morning plane from Canton, second time since May.'

Leith came from the Shanghai plane with a string of passengers: grave, sunburned, saved. Smiled as he found Exley in a gathering at the gate. When they had shaken hands and were walking to the car, Peter said, 'You saw the crash.'

'Poor devils.'

'I thought it was you.' Angry, aggrieved. 'They told me you were dead.'

'Heraclitus.'

'I was furious.' At the event, at his own hysteria, and Leith trying to get him through it with banter.

They trundled to Nathan Road, heading for the car ferry. He said, 'I mean it. You'd run out on me.'

Kowloon ran out at the end of their road in a display of spars and funnels. Across the strait, the green romantic mountain. Leith was staying at the Gloucester. He told Exley, 'I gave your address to one or two people.'

'Two letters came, I should have brought them. We can stop off at the barracks on our way.'

Aboard the ferry, they stood on deck, watching the island arrive over the water, above junks, sampans, and lighters, and an American warship called
Valley Forge.
The villas, repaired, stood out from green declivities; there was the long, low, discoloured litter of the town at the shore. Sunstruck names of old companies could be made out on façades along the Praya: LaPraik, Dodwell, McKinnon Mackenzie; and a forest of Chinese signs. Beyond these, there were the ranked godowns.

Leith said, 'I always liked it.'

'I like it well enough.' Exley seemed committed, now, to this measure of approval, even as he felt pleasure; even as he felt responsible for the occasion and the scene.

'I see the cathedral, the club, all the icons. Government House has acquired a Japanese tower.'

'They decided not to pull it down. In fact, it doesn't look bad.'

'The tall building is new since my time. The bank, is it?'

'I work in there, as it happens. The man-made high point — a primeval fact that ever excites attention.'

'One of my early memories is being taken to the highest point in London by my godmother, a far from primeval figure in toque, dust coat, and lavender spats. My cousin and I climbed a spiral of three hundred and something steps. The monument to the Great Fire. It was worth it, though, at the top.'

At the barracks, Leith sat on a trunk while Exley looked out his letters.

'Thanks.' Glancing, pocketing, pleased.

The trunk was marked
FARELF.

'Far East Land Forces. It's what I'm attached to. Not sentimentally, you understand.'

Leith was looking round the room. 'Peter, this is bad. You can't stay here.' Noting the encroachment of Rysom's chaos. 'Who's the chap you share with?'

Exley sketched in Rysom. He agreed: 'I've let it drag on. They said there was no choice, but I should have kept after them.'

Rysom irrupted as they were leaving. Exley made introductions. There was the slight tension, on their part, of having just criticised this man — who, with his adverse quickness, picked it up, saying, 'Speak of the devil, eh?' And turning to Aldred Leith: 'He talks about you all the time.'

'Mentioned you exactly twice.'

'Got up at dawn to meet you. Excited as a child.'

Peter said, 'That's true enough.'

Dissatisfied, they went their ways.

At the hotel, Leith had a large corner room with a terrace and an oblique view of the sea. The two men stood out in the breeze, leaning on an iron balustrade, while the world was exclaiming in the street below. In Des Voeux Road, the rattling trams, the new Studebakers, and the bells from pedicabs; in Pedder Street, the rickshaw coolies clearing space for their tawny stride with shouts of
Hai-yahh,
while a row of their fellows, squatting at the kerb under Jardine's arcade, took their noon meal, the bowl in thick fingers, the other hand rapid with motions of the sticks. The scholars passed, slippered and gowned, the sun-coloured Buddhists, and the French nuns in sky blue under the white and mediaeval headdress. And the tourists, with wallets rashly displayed, filing into the Swatow Lace Company.

As they watched, a Chinese funeral came from Queen's Road in an outburst of colours and costumes and percussion instruments, the bowed mourners walking behind. Banners, lettered and fringed, proclaimed the virtues of the defunct — or so Peter Exley had been told. Leith said, 'What I see is an advertisement for the band.' The procession passed on, in a great collision of cymbals.

Reverberations of the crash were subsiding. By now, misery would have circulated: the dead would be named, the relatives informed; existence derailed. With the onlookers pursuing what had seemed, for the first grateful hour or so, their own charmed lives.

Leith unpacked, turned over a pile of mail, and sent for their late breakfast. There were still, of course, the two letters untouched in his pocket. And Peter, going to wash the morning off in the bathroom, thought that Leith would now be free to open these alone.

In the bathroom mirror, Exley's face was grimed, his eyes reddish. When he doused his head, flinty grit circled the basin, yellow pellets dissolved. His sweated tunic, pristine that morning and now slung on a peg, was similarly coated. The balustrade had added its own sooty touch at elbows.

When he came back, the room was full of light, the shutters open, the fan rotating. Breakfast stood on a wheeled tray. It was clear that the two letters had been read, though nowhere to be seen. Leith was sitting back in a familiar attitude, foot cocked on knee, hands clasped behind his head: abstracted, well pleased.

Bendedict's letter was short, in an irregular hand:

Dear Aldred,

The way we miss you. Two American officials came looking for you. One nice, one not. I think they may be spies. They will come back. So will you, and in your case we'll exult. I am in a better phase just today. Helen will tell you how we speak of you, and love you — Ben

Both envelopes were in Helen's hand. Also the following:

Dear Aldred,

When you were at Harbin, we looked at Harbin on the map; at Shanhaikwan, the same. When you get to Kwangchowwan, think of us with the atlas open. Still -

Maps are of place, not time, nor can they say

The surprising height and colour of a building

Or where the groups of people bar the way.

These lines are about Verona, where we went with Bertram and where I put a rose on Juliet's tomb. Sad Newman, in the Strait of Bonifacio, incorporated a line from Romeo and Juliet into his hymn. Did you realise?

Looking up Shanhaikwan, I learn that it 'is situated' where the Great Wall descends to the sea. Describe this, please, when you come.

Tomorrow, Ben is being taken to Tokyo, having a place in an ambulance plane, to see the American doctor who keeps track of his condition. He will be away a week. I am not to go. I am always afraid of their keeping him. This must occur to him, too. We don't speak of it.

Kyoto and Nara, now a month ago, seem a hallucination. Of this, too, when you come. The nice American, of the pair who came for you, took us out in a launch for my birthday, making all arrangements, miraculous, for Ben. His name is Tad. He is kind. He speaks some Japanese, but is subordinate to the other man, who is civilian. I can't ask him why they are here, as it might sound sarcastic.

We fear to weary you with our high feelings, but they don't change.

Helen

When he was alone, Leith closed off the noise of the street. He took off his boots and jacket. He drew the letters from his pocket and lay down on the sofa to reread them. He might have liked to speak to Peter Exley of these letters, but not to violate the immediate pleasure. In coming days, he might talk about Helen and Ben. About Helen. That release must find its moment.

You will come back. When you come. It was years since anyone had longed for his return.

As they sat at breakfast, Peter had said, 'You look young, Aldred, for someone who just walked a thousand miles. When you came from the plane, I thought you older. But not now.'

Leith took hotel stationery from a drawer and found his pen.

Dear Ben,

I think you will long since be back from Tokyo. What I hope, naturally, is that you've been helped by those days. In three weeks, I'll learn more, and perhaps recount something of these places where my travels appear to me as a farewell.

Please imagine, dear Ben, how pleasant it was for me, coming here this morning from Shanghai, to have your letter and Helen's safely delivered by my friend. Thank you for this, and for your words, which I hope to deserve. I'm writing now to Helen. You know my affection for you both.

Aldred

My dear Helen,

The letters, yours and Ben's, were so welcome this morning. Throughout my time in the north, I was busy, and seldom alone. But no one was reading Carlyle in the next room, or bringing me John Clare with tremulous hand. I have a volume of Chinese verse for your birthday — as I think, well translated. I have worked out that you are seventeen.

I remember the Verona poem, which you will say for me soon.

I know nothing of the two men who alarmingly 'came for me.' It's in fact quite possible that they are investigators. Washington is busy around the world these days, rooting out subversion. That I am not subversive would not help me in the least. If Thaddeus is kind, as you say, he should not be mingling in that Judas racket.

Seeing Peter again seems very natural. I think he is lonely here, and glad of my company, as I of his. The arrival this morning was unnerving, coinciding with the cruel crash of a local plane. We both, Peter and I, feel pursued by evocations of wartime violence, unexorcised. In my case, I think these now recede.

When I think of what has recently been, I'm incredulous that the world is preparing for more war. When I think of Hiroshima, I'm aghast, and helpless.

I still mean to come by the small ship from Hong Kong to Kure, though it adds three days. I'd like to enter from the west, by the narrow passage. In Japanese, the Inland Sea is called a strait. How do your lessons go?

May our high feelings never diminish.

Aldred

He put his two letters in a single envelope, addressed with both names. Holding this on his palm as if to weigh it, he felt it to be reckless. Reassured himself; but left it unsealed, one letter to be reread before sending.

He wondered what Tad's age might be. He was to lunch at Government House, and walked along Queen's Road, then uphill through the park. All as it had been, as if never harrowed. In the vestibule, a fellow guest murmured, 'We won't get a square meal here. It's iron rations, to show solidarity with Home.' At table, Leith sat on the right of Lady Grantham, whose conversation 9was dispensed in iron rations. Indoor light was shrouded by elderly curtains. A youngish woman of good breeding sat on his other side, plump and sociable: handsome Miss Fellowes, wearing a hat of white silk flowers. She was unmarried, in her late twenties: a fair face, and kind. Her eyes and hair were indistinct, scarcely hazel. They found that they were staying in the same hotel, she for much longer. However, this mild gauntlet, laid gently down between them, languished along with bottled peas and beetroot and finger bowls. And they spoke of Yokohama, where Audrey Fellowes intended to visit her brother, who had lost an arm in Burma late in the war. A guest told him, 'Audrey rallies to the afflicted. She is maternal.'

Before leaving the table, they exchanged addresses in Japan, and in remote Britain, with ironic consciousness that they were not to meet at the Gloucester Hotel. Her good hands had a commonsensical way of bringing pen from handbag, of writing address in green notebook; aligning fork and knife. How women, he thought, develop capability, out of their hundred thousand rehearsals. As yet, Helen's hold on things was tentative, unless with a book.

Even so, I want her to grow older, to enter her nineteenth, her twentieth year. It's only that the circumspection comes in, and the charmless good sense.

Although he was meeting Exley later at the barracks across the way, he accompanied Miss Fellowes down to Queen's Road; and there shook hands most cordially. They understood, also cordially, that it was the least he could do.

That evening, he posted his letters, remembering that he'd considered the content injudicious. Remembering that his word had not been 'injudicious' but 'reckless.' He wrote up his notes, and attended to the rest of his mail. At midnight, he reflected on the crash. It could easily, as Peter had assumed, have been himself. After wartime escapes, he'd expected better from peace. Putting out the light, he fell asleep a saved man.