The Heat of the Sun

that, Wainwright was happy, or as happy as he could be.
    ‘Needless to say, I didn’t learn all this on that first morning; still, I discovered enough to know there was a connection between Wainwright and me, something broken in me that
responded to what was broken in him. By the end of that voyage we were fast friends, and when he learned I was a photographer, he said I was the man of the hour. Reuters would be more than
interested in the snaps I could take in China. Wainwright could do the words and I could do the pictures. What a team we’d make! Suffice to say he was on the money.
    ‘We ended up in Peking. For Wainwright this was an old stomping ground, and as spring turned to summer that year he initiated me thoroughly into its bars, its brothels, its opium dens; if
it’s true that every man has one special talent, Wainwright’s was for immersing himself in the lowlife of any place he visited and dragging any half-willing accomplice down with
him.
    ‘But our pleasures were short-lived. Just over the border in Manchuria – Manchukuo, as its Jap masters called it now – the drums of war were beating. The Tosei-ha faction,
wresting control of the government in Tokyo, was intent on fresh hostilities in China.
    ‘When the “incident” happened at Marco Polo Bridge, just outside Peking, I don’t think Wainwright turned a hair, but war had never come so close to me, and I was
frightened. A minor skirmish, that’s all it was: Jap troops, there to protect their embassy, firing on a party of Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese Nationalists. But we knew what was really
going on. For the Japs to conquer Korea was one thing, but how could they hold Manchuria? Chiang Kai-shek would never stand for it. For the Japs, there was no going back. There was nothing to do
but defeat him utterly. They couldn’t stop until they possessed the whole of China. Now the “incident” gave them a pretext for new incursions. It was the Chinese! The Chinese had
started it!
    ‘Wainwright was in his element. There’s something fearless about a fellow like that; I suppose if you’ve lost so much, you don’t care if you lose the rest. The next few
years saw us knocking around China as the Japs continued their relentless advance. Reuters got more than their money’s worth. We were there when Shanghai fell; we were there when the Japs
stormed into Nanking, taking possession of the city in an orgy of pillage and plunder.
    ‘They say the Rape of Nanking shocked the world, but only if you’d been there could you understand the horror of those days. Who cared if you were a civilian? Who cared if you were a
POW? The Japs had turned into monsters, driven by primitive hatreds. Their savagery knew no bounds – and I took the pictures. Remember that little pigtailed girl screaming and cowering as the
Jap’s bayonet lunges towards her? That was one of mine.
    ‘Wainwright and I were lucky to escape with our lives. How many times did we fling ourselves on the last train out of a city that burned behind us? How many times did we trudge with
refugees over devastated fields, always just one step ahead of the Japs? On and on they came, like locusts. Soon, pretty much all of China was in Jap hands, except the provinces of Szechwan and
Yunnan, but there was no end in sight to the war. Chiang Kai-shek wasn’t giving up, and the Japs became more determined to bring him to his knees.
    ‘Strange, how war changes time! China seemed like the world to me then; I barely seemed to have had another life, and if I had, it was so far away there was no going back. If you’d
told me I’d be sitting one day on a beach in California, I’d never have believed you. America was unreal to me, as unreal as Wainwright married to Cousin Essie. We heard there was war
in Europe and shrugged. We had enough going on in China, but never dreamed that the Chinese war would fan out to consume the whole Pacific.
    ‘By the end of 1941 we’d holed up in Hong Kong. It was a relief to be in a British colony. We needed a rest and Wainwright’s talents had found a new outlet. I’d always
known that Oxford accent of his was worth its weight in gold, but never quite how much until he infiltrated the finest club in town. He’d put it out that he was Lord Somebody, a relative of
the British royals. There wasn’t a member of that club he didn’t fleece blind. Our plan was to rake in as much as we could, then take a little vacation. Wainwright said he fancied a