Read Online Oriental Hotel by Janet Tanner - Free Book Online Page A

Hong Kong for their own safety and she could not be allowed to return there. The Colony was much too vulnerable.
    Why in the name of heaven did I leave? she asked herself for the hundredth time as she raised a hand to summon a horse-drawn gharry to drive her back to Shepheard’s Hotel. Why didn’t I foresee what might happen? But in the bustle of Hong Kong’s business world and the gaiety and gra-ciousness of the colonial social whirl, war had seemed an empty threat – virtually an impossibility. In June, when she had left, nothing had changed. There were still orchestral dinners nightly on the open-air terrace at the Peninsula Hotel and dancing in the Rose Room. And if Gordon, her husband, had experienced any reduction in the business he was able to generate from his small new electronics factory on Hong Kong Island, he had said nothing to her about it.
    As for the war in Europe, that had seemed a world away and if there were any warning signs of trouble from Japan, she had been unaware of them. Or perhaps she had wanted to be unaware, she thought; for when the letter had arrived from Cairo telling her that her mother was dying of lung cancer, nothing had been important but that she should go to her.
    â€˜I must, Gordon, I must!’ Her voice had trembled with the shock that ran through her in chilling waves, and Gordon had held her hand in his – wanting only to ease her stricken look, yet reluctant to let her go.
    â€˜It’s a long way, Elise; she wouldn’t expect it.’
    â€˜I don’t care what she expects. She’s all alone, Gordon.’
    â€˜She has her husband.’
    â€˜The Brigadier!’ Elise had snorted, her dislike for her stepfather evident in her tone. ‘You know what he’s like as well as I do. He arranges everything to suit his own convenience. Please, Gordon – I wouldn’t stay long. If she’s as ill as she sounds, it will all be over very soon anyway. But I must see her; I must try to put things right.’
    A muscle had moved in Gordon’s cheek. He knew he had played his part in things not being ‘ right’ as Elise phrased it.
    â€˜All right, Elise, go to Cairo. We’ll manage here. Only don’t be away too long.’
    â€˜I won’t,’ she had promised.
    But things had not worked out that way, for in July, just a few weeks after she had left Hong Kong, invasion by Japan became too real a possibility to be discounted and the British Government had begun evacuating women and children to Australia.
    At first, involved with her dying mother and exhausted by emotion, Elise did not realise the significance of what was happening east of Cairo. Her days were a procession of hours when she sat beside her mother’s bed, chained as much by guilt as by the iron grip of the painfully thin fingers around her wrist, listening to the harsh rasp of breath in diseased lungs and wishing there were something – anything – she could do to relieve the suffering. Leave her she could not. But at last, when merciful release came and after her mother had been buried beneath Egyptian soil, Elise found her return to Hong Kong blocked.
    In panic she explored every available channel. ‘I must get back – I must!’ But always the answer was the same: no expatriates were to be allowed back into Hong Kong by order of the British Government.
    In November her hopes were raised when the lonely husbands of the Colony formed a Protest Group to demand the return of their wives; under the pressure the forced evacuations were stopped, but still the Government refused to allow the women back.
    The Japanese were on the Hong Kong/Chinese border, Elise was told, and she must realise for her own safety …
    She returned to the present with a jolt as a gharry stopped in answer to her summons, the driver eyeing her with curiosity when she instructed him to drive her to Shepheard’s. He did not care for European women who