They toss a coin for the bed, and Will gets the floor.

“You could sleep in the old bird’s bed.” Evers nods toward the small room the amah has in the back.

“I’m not that hard up,” Will says lightly. “She’s had a rough time of it too, without me taking her room.”

“Just thinking of you, mate.” Evers shrugs. “Do you think she could rustle up some supper? ”

Will rummages in his pack. Trudy, still Chinese enough to be obsessed with food, had made sure he had some tins in his rucksack although he had deemed it unnecessary. “I have bully beef and some carrots.”

The amah is happy to have something to do. She holds up a cup of rice and cooks it with the meat and vegetable, and then they eat-she taking a bowl to her room, and the two men in the dining alcove, with the radio turned on, disembodied voice crackling on with news of the war.

“The bridges at the northern frontier have been blown up to prevent the advancement of Japanese troops…” Later, someone who was there will tell Will of the surreal scene-the British assiduously setting up their explosives in plain sight of the Japanese, who were just as diligently building another bridge to swing across once the destruction had happened, the two sides studiously ignoring each other, neither questioning the inevitability of what the other was doing, nor trying to stop it. “Doesn’t that just sum it all up,” this man, a policeman, said. “Thoroughly demented.”

All through the night, the flat shudders and is lit with the fire of bombs. Will hears Evers, his rapid breath, neither of them asleep.

In the morning, Evers washes himself thoroughly.

“Don’t know the next time I’ll be able to do this,” he says, toweling off with one of the Weatherlys’ linens and tossing it in the corner. “Do you think breakfast is in the offing?”

“Do you think of anything else but food? ”

“What else is there to think about, mate? Times like these, you get to the basics-what you eat, where you shit, finding a place to sleep. It’s what keeps you sane.”

They call HQ to see what to do next. Nobody knows a thing.

“Just stay there for now,” a voice barks at them. They hear clattering and men shouting. The line clicks off.

“Good to know they’re on top of the situation,” Evers says.

“We’re the civilians. I’m sure the top guys know what’s going on.”

“One would hope.”

They decide to go out. Montgomery Street is empty, being primarily an enclave for European expatriates who have all fled to higher ground or to China. The few storefronts-a bakery, a shoe repair shop-are closed up and dark inside. The windows are already dirty from the soot and dirt kicked up by the bombs, but through one, Will can see a rotting egg tart, its glistening yellow surface slowly being invaded by green mold. A fly lands on top and starts making its way across the mold, twitching its antennae. An airplane whines overhead and Will flinches instinctively.

When they go back to the flat, the amah is gone, her room as clean as if she had never lived there.

“Nothing to do here,” Evers says. “I think we should try to get back to HQ. It’s going to drive me mad staying here doing nothing.”

They gather their belongings and pick their way in the gathering dusk through the streets. Refuse has started to build up on the curbs and a low, persistent stench rises from the road. They see a car speed up as it approaches them, and in it a Chinese man averting his gaze. They are in sight of the lorry and Will remarks that the doors are open when they hear it. Evers’s head cocks up to the whining sound, and Will watches him watch the first bomb come down and destroy a building not fifty feet away. It is as if it is in slow motion. Evers yells, “Watch out!” and dives for the ground. Will follows and he feels the earth open up and fall below them, his body dealt an enormous crushing blow, ears ringing and eyes stinging, and then in the next moment-the next moment of clarity-they are crawling toward the shelter of the lorry, the closest thing there is. In the back of his mind, as the ground is pounded and shaken by the intensifying chaos, Will notes the lorry has been picked clean. The tires are missing and the open doors reveal a missing steering wheel. Evers is shouting something else, something about this being civilian territory and why are they bombing, but Will can’t hear the rest because he is thinking that the tires are missing and that it is hard to move forward with the ground shaking like this, and then all is white.

December 15, 1941

WHEN HE WAKES UP, he is woozy and cold. Overhead, an enormous light is glaring down at him. The sheets are like ice on his swollen limbs. He is afraid to look at his own body.

But here is relief. He is not dead. Then he remembers. Evers. But he doesn’t remember. Every part of his body hurts so much he feels as if his head is about to explode. He lifts the sheet. His left knee is swollen to the size of a small melon. Around the bandage bulges flesh colored purple, black, livid, angry.

Jane Lessig, whom he has met before at parties, comes by. She is dressed in white, and in his woozy state he thinks she looks like an angel.

“There you are,” she says. “You had us worried, you know.”

“Water? ”

“No water for you right now. Doctor’s orders.”

He doesn’t think he’s ever felt quite so awful in his life.

“I’m so embarrassed,” he tells her.

“What on earth for?” She cranks up his bed with a quizzical look.

“It was just a short experience,” he tries to explain. “Nothing warlike about it.”

“You’re talking nonsense.”

He sees she doesn’t understand his meaning. He tries again.

“Evers?”

“Don’t worry about him,” she says, and walks quickly away.

He wanders in and out of consciousness.

He sees Trudy in a white dress, like a nurse, like a bride, like a shroud. She sponges his forehead. But her hair is blond now. She is not Trudy.

“Listen,” whispers the wondrous Jane Lessig. “You were not in the Volunteers. You’re a civilian who was walking down the street and hit by debris from a bomb.” She doesn’t want him to go to a POW camp. It’s unclear who is going where but she thinks the civilians will be better off than the soldiers. He nods. He understands, then forgets. She says it to him every day, like an incantation that will save him.

Jane Lessig brings him a bowl of pudding.

When he gets up to look out the window, the first time he has been up, he is surprised to find that he has a limp.

“I’ve a limp!” he says to Jane Lessig.

“Yes, you do,” she says. “And a fine one at that.”

“I’m feeling much better,” he says. “I think I could be discharged soon.”

“Do you, now?” she says crisply. “We’ll leave that to the doctors, shall we?”

But he does feel better and when Dr. Whitley comes around, Will is dressed and ready to go.

“I don’t think I’m doing much good here, do you?” he asks.

“Will,” Dr. Whitley says. “It’s very different out there. Kowloon ’s besieged and we’re trying to hold out here for as long as possible. There have been enormous casualties. Do you know where you could stay?”

“Could go to Trudy’s? ” he wonders.

“She’s been here every day,” the doctor says. “But I didn’t let her come in. I thought it would be too upsetting for her. You’re not at your most handsome. She said to tell you she’s staying with Angeline and would be by later on today.”

“Oh,” Will says. “Then I’ll stay until she comes.”

The doctor gives him a peculiar look and nods. He’s finished looking at Will’s knee.

When Trudy comes, she is different. He can’t tell why and then he sees-she has no lipstick on, no jewelry, her clothes are drab, no color of any sort. He mentions this to her, sort of an ice breaker to take away from the fact that he is injured, in a hospital, that the world is at war. It is odd to be shy with Trudy. He does not want to seem diminished in front of her.