As the first light of dawn touched the sky, we had one last kiss and embrace before I quietly snuck out of his room and back to the radio hut barracks. I crawled into my bed but didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. We were wakened early and packed the last of our things and took them down to the beach to where the nuns and villagers were already mingling nervously saying good-bye. Then I went with two others to blow the charges we had set on the radio masts, and by midday we had brought the four big radio aerials tumbling safely down onto the sand and into the jungle. When we got back to the beach, the evacuation ship was already getting steam up, and they had long ago finished loading up the baggage and all of the radio equipment that could be removed.

Last to leave the island were the nuns and us. The big islander women nuns who were evacuated had to be pushed up the rope ladders hanging down the ship’s side, and this was a great embarrassment to the men who had to help them up. Matron called out loudly, “Keep your eyes down men; God will know if you look up.” And everyone obeyed her. The big women finally made the railing of the ship and were pulled over to tumble onto the deck, their habits fluttering in the breeze and exposing their bare, honey-brown legs.

Last of them to go up was Matron, and she looked daggers at the man who tried to help her. Unaided, she laboriously climbed the dozen rungs on her own. But even she didn’t make it onto the deck without collapsing.

When I was on board, I looked toward the beach we had been taken from and waved to Malcolm and the islanders who had come to watch us leave. The three novices who hadn’t wanted to go had had their habits taken from them and now stood in a huddle in colourful sarongs, obviously crying to see their companions leave and waving wildly to them as the ship got under way.

The next boat they would see arrive we all knew would almost certainly be a Japanese navy boat.

That night I dreamed of Malcolm. Since the night of his birthday, when we had got drunk on the beach and staggered back to a patch of grass beneath some palm trees and collapsed together, we had been lovers. He claimed he had been charmed that he’d come on to me on the beach, a Martell, drinking Martell cognac, and I told him “what else would a Martell drink?” although the truth of the matter was that it was the only decent liquor we had on the island, left there when a French exporter evacuated at the first opportunity and packed up so fast he missed a case of it. We had literally fallen into each other’s arms that night. I was experienced, I knew what I was doing, while Malcolm was a virgin and uncertain what he wanted. But I wanted him desperately. I had ached for him from almost the first time I saw him.

Our lovemaking was never wild, even the first time, and we never cried out in the heat of passion as I had before. It was a small island, and nowhere was far from someone’s hut. In the tropical heat the windows were always open, and when we made love in his room, we knew that even small sounds travelled across the mission’s compound to the sisters’ dormitory and the Matron’s room.

I was experienced. But with Malcolm it was different. I was the taker and I wanted him to myself, forever.

“Forever is a long time,” he said.

“Not long enough,” I whispered back.