The Sakai turned curiously to look at her, and immediately eased his pace. Slowing down made the pain and heat return into her feet and ankles; exhaustion flooded back while her heart pumped deafeningly. Now she moved in a different trance, a pain-ridden state where only the thought of seeing Alan at the end of the journey kept her going. Soon, she was beyond thought, she was all pain, hot aching agony which began in the burning soles of her feet and seared up her legs in waves. On, on, on, she pushed herself forwards.

Suddenly she found herself struggling against some obstruction. She raised her arms as if fending off foe, before words and gentle restraint made her pause. It was a woman, whose voice she struggled to recognise. Liz saw an elderly Chinese standing before her. She felt total despair that this frail woman should be able to stop her and bar her way. ‘Excuse me,’ she gasped as if to negotiate this new barrier she must be polite, move round.

‘Miss Elizabeth? It is Miss Elizabeth! Where is my Lee?’

Shock of recognition sent goose pimples over her over-heated body and her knees failed spectacularly. The woman knelt quickly before her, then, as her breathing eased, Liz leaned forward into the woman’s arms. ‘Oh! Mrs Guisan! It’s you!’ Liz sobbed with exhaustion, Ch’ing because the girl was a woman and had not recognised her.

‘Lee’s coming. I just came quicker.’ She paused. With heart-stopping anxiety she asked, ‘Alan? The soldier?’

‘Rest a moment,’ Ch’ing said, looking at the young woman’s torn clothes and scratched arms and legs telling of the headlong race to arrive in time.

‘No!’ She struggled to her feet again, swaying. A little group of fascinated Sakai women and children watched and parted as Ch’ing led her the rest of the way to a large hut built just below the brow of the hill. The hut sides were hinged to the roof and propped up on poles to allow every cooking breeze to blow through.

She could see the bed as she approached, the still figure on it. The thin, thin, figure with a Sakai grandmother dipping her finger into a bowl and moistening his lips. Her heart leaped as in the caring she saw he survived, he was not dead ... but as she drew nearer her traitor mind added ‘yet’.

She ached with the sadness of hardly recognising the young man who seemed to have been replaced by a bearded emaciated man many years older. Sparsely fleshed, even gaunt before, now the angles of jaw were hidden by a sandy growth of beard much lighter than his hair but the cheek bone was acute — and across the top of his head was a smoothly healed scar. For some stupid illogical reason she remembered the shot-off crepe sole of Josef’s sandal, how her bullet had torn a clean semi-circular swathe through the white rubber.

She wanted to run her hand soothingly over the wound, take him up into her arms and forcibly bring him back to life. Instead she went down on her knees gently, like one preparing to pray, and took his hand, cradling it between hers, kissing the inert fingers.

‘Alan, I’m here now. It’s Liz. You’ll be all right now. Of course you will.’ She cradled the hand by her cheek and anxiously sought the movement between the hollowed ribcage as he breathed — it was so slight.

She woke with a start, finding her head on the bed over her arm, her legs collapsed under her. ‘Alan! We’re still fine.’ She straightened, reassuring him, recollecting herself. ‘Just waiting for you to open your eyes to see me. It’s Liz, Alan.’ She glanced to the far side of the bed, where the old Sakai woman nodded approval as she continued to smear Alan’s lips from the bowl. Ch’ing too was there by her side.

‘Come and eat,’ Ch’ing said, hand on her shoulder. ‘You need strength too.’

‘I can’t leave him.’

‘Then I bring you food here.’

She did eat ravenously, once begun, of a meal of roasted semolina root, like the most delicious floury potatoes, with game, rice, fresh-cut pineapple. Then Pa Kasut had a bed brought in so she might rest alongside Alan when she wanted to.

‘I want to thank you so much for all you have done,’ she told the old man. She put her hands together in the Chinese fashion and bowed her thanks to him.

He rocked a little on his heels, looking quite embarrassed and overwhelmed. Walking round to the far side of the bed, he re-established his composure by ordering the old woman to go and refill her bowl with the liquid he had brewed.

Liz thanked her when she returned and asked if she might take over the duty of moistening Alan’s lips. The Sakai woman showed her how to introduce tiny drops into his mouth. Once Liz introduced too much and he swallowed with a gigantic and unnatural effort, then coughed. She thought she might have killed him. She was much more cautious after this.

The liquid was clear and bright like spring water. It was curiously heart-wringing to be physically near him yet knowing he was unaware. Gently she traced his smooth lips between the unfamiliar beard and moustache and felt the action more like one indulged in by lovers in English meadows full of long-stemmed buttercups. She fantasised that he only feigned sleep and might suddenly snap at her fingers. ‘You promised always to make me laugh. I mean to keep you to your word.’

Experimentally she tasted the liquid herself and was reminded of a kind of gripe water used in the nursery; it tasted partly sweet, partly alcoholic. She put the finger from her own lips to his in a kind of reverent kiss.

She watched and talked to him, sensitive for the least response. Once she thought his eyes moved beneath his eyelids as if he was dreaming.

‘Where are you, Alan? Come back to me! Alan, it’s Liz. I waited for you at the bungalow, waited a long time ... ’ She told him about the mat and the cushions, about the flowers and the butterfly.

Ch’ing came to sit with her and they talked, including him in the conversation, trying to pull at his mind, tug his memory.

‘His father died unexpectedly — like mine,’ Liz said. ‘It created a bond between us to talk about this.’

‘Your father dead?’

‘Oh, Ch’ing, you didn’t know’?’

She told the story as simply as she could. Ch’ing’s eyes never left her face and when all was told, she uttered two words which were fair trial and honest verdict, ‘My Josef.’

She rose soon afterwards and when Liz would have gone with her she shook her head and motioned towards Alan. ‘I all right,’ she said, ‘back soon.’

Liz watched her go. She walked out and towards the hut the Sakais had allotted for the women visitors, an old, bent, solitary woman in the moonlight, her shoulders eloquent of this new burden of knowledge. A son who had murdered a man who had done him nothing but good, a man who, Liz knew, had regarded himself more as an uncle than as the employer of the man’s father.

Beyond the hut Ch’ing entered, Liz could hear the Sakais calling to each other. She was surprised how loudly some of the men talked to each other. When they were on the edges of others’ habitation they appeared shy, but here in their own home they were obviously joking and chattering with spirit and humour.

Alone with Alan she put her hands on his shoulders, leaning gently down to kiss his lips. ‘They say a kiss without a moustache is like a meal without salt,’ she whispered to him, then kissed his forehead and eyes. Just the way her father had once roused her from sleep to leave early for a holiday. Kindly but firmly his tones had reached into her sleeping mind; now her voice must reach into Alan’s. It was like an intercession as she talked on and on, pleading for the darkness to let his mind go, let him back into life.

‘The jungle is never still, Alan, always there is growth, and after the rains the young shoots grow inches overnight. Life and light, Alan. Look! Over between the trees I can see lights, tiny dancing sparks. Fireflies. I used to think they were fairies, Tinkerbell and her friends, I used to tell Lee. You remember Lee? She and her mother were at the camp, they saved you and brought you to the Sakais. Lee will be here soon. You could wake up and say thank you.’