Nadia halted twice during the night. The second time, she came across a European-style bungalow, shaded by Chinese pines and bauhinias, close to a bay with three tall palm trees by the foreshore. She spent what seemed like an eternity curled up in a dry watercourse, using dry leaves and twigs for a blanket, her sacks as pillows. For a long while she would not sleep. Horror-struck by images of men screaming their last breath, of a lorry’s headlights slicing though the night, of defenceless victims lying in the sand, she felt as though her soul was under attack. The visions shone in her head brightly, refusing to fade. Worn out and paranoiac, she forced her eyes shut and repeated over and over that by morning everything would be fine, that the nightmares would have gone, that what she’d witnessed would be forgotten.
She lay in the dark, rousing herself eight or nine times so that she could stare into the blackness of the bauhinia grove, believing she’d heard whispers. She thought of the old stories told to her as a child. The stories of Baba Yaga – the evil hag who lived in the forest, in a house made out of chicken legs and human skulls, the witch that feasted on children.
She tossed and turned until exhaustion overcame her, sleeping fitfully with her hands squeezed tight between her knees. And when she dreamed, it was of headless soldiers walking backwards into the sea and swords falling like moonbeams.
She awoke at first light coughing, opening her eyes to see sprinklings of early sunshine sifting through the branches and falling across her body. Somewhere, in the thicket, a rooster was crowing. Face emerging from the leaves, she tasted the ocean air on her lips and sat up. Dawn kissed the surf and the entire seafront was covered with a powdery haze. There were no Japanese light cruisers or patrol boats in sight.
Instinctively, she began to scratch herself. The carnivorous mosquitoes had been at her for hours and the bumps along her skin had swelled to the size of tiny boiled eggs. She congratulated herself for managing to sleep through the bites and monstrous, high-pitched whining, but now her clothes were damp and her entire body felt alive with stings. Her face was itching, her eyelids were itching, even her ankles and toes were itching. Nadia straightened up and removed a worm from her hair and a stink bug from her shoe. The last time she’d spent a night outdoors was in Tver, the night her home was razed. She massaged the base of her back which was stiff and sore. Mud was caked inside her trousers. There was sand in her eyes. Dreaming about calamine lotion, she rubbed her hands over her face. All she wanted to do was to free the obi sash from her chest and scratch herself until she bled.
Nadia fished into a bag and unfurled the map of Hong Kong which was old and slippery to the touch from overuse. She looked for Stanley and found it nestled in the south of the island. With her pulse points suddenly alive and throbbing, she worked out that she couldn’t be more than four miles from Iain and the internment camp. Was she in Repulse Bay, she wondered, or Deep Water Bay? Unable to determine her exact position, she decided to do a little reconnaissance instead.
She walked through the long grass, noting that she was in a valley. There were two squatter huts by the foothills, made from driftwood, corrugated iron and packed dry earth. Apart from a solitary woman washing clothes and cabbages in a hillside stream some distance away, there was not a soul about. She did not like being alone. She came to a white-washed building. The bullet-scarred bungalow was deserted and the doors frayed, its windows blown-out. A wooden notice was nailed to an exterior wall, worn by the weather and the caprices of the seasons. Some of the words were washed away by rain. Black ink paled to white. It read:
British officers and soldiers! Surrender now! Why are you waiting for the Chungking army to save you? They will never come. The Malay Peninsula and the Philippine Islands are already under Japanese rule. Your comrades in Kowloon are in Shamchun and enjoying a happy, serene Christmas. Think of your families. This is your last chance to surrender.
Japanese Army. December 20, 1941
She found a brass plaque, mottled, muddy and scarred. Her thumb wiped away some of the dirt. Hanging on salt-rusted screws from a brick partition, near illegible from grime, it told her that she was in the grounds of the Deep Water Bay Golf Course. She looked over her shoulder and identified the three tall palm trees that Costa had mentioned.
The grass was as high as her knee. Whetted by hunger, Nadia walked around the fairway, which was lush and green and overgrown. She found herself a strip of shade under the Chinese pines and settled down in a spot where the road curved and began its climb up the hill. Here she sat and gazed at the sunlight on the water. She was still exhausted.
To keep her strength up she took a few swigs from her canteen of water and ate a biscuit and one of the tangerines. She wanted so much to jump into the sea and rinse away the previous night’s terror, but the risk of being seen was too great. Instead, she closed her eyes and angled her face towards the sun. Spots of red and orange formed behind her eyelids. The breeze on the surf, the scent of rain in the air, the thin-sounding birdsong in the trees, contrasted with the sensations of fear and hope mushrooming violently within her.
Nadia emerged from her daydream, snatched from her stupor by the shrill, rasping calls of a black-winged kite. She watched the bird wheel away over the ocean above Deep Water Bay, its small, precise head angled earthward, scrutinizing the wrinkled waters for any fish that might be embroidering the surface of the sea.
The sky had grown overcast. A few scattered rays of sunshine shot through the clouds like drizzles of honey, pouring golden rivers through the grey. Specks of rain wetted her cheek. She sat bolt upright the moment she heard a motorcar approaching in the distance. Scrambling, she hid in the thicket, lying flat on her tummy. The downpour started just as an ancient-looking Morris Cowley pulled up to the palm trees. The wooden-spoked wheels ground to a skid. When Nadia heard the deep, violent Ooogah of a car horn, she sprang to her feet and ran through the deluge, tripping amongst the weeds and the stones. A black figure was staring though the windscreen. The thundering rain closed in on her.