Free The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard

unlucky boy. 'Of all my friends from the war, Peter has least impetus to remake his life. We all hang back, one way or another, but he more than most.
    'We had odd, early connections. Found that we'd been students in Florence at the same time, before the war. Must have passed each other often in those streets. And then, when we first met, in Cairo in 1942, each of us was carrying the same book.' He laughed. 'It was in the dark, a room in a seedy hotel where we'd been billetted. The lights had failed, as they often did. Coming into the room, I could just make him out, by the window. At sunrise, we found that we had the same book.'
    Helen, almost shouting, 'What was the book?'
    But he interrupted her: 'My God, something of the kind happened here, when I got off the Tokyo train. But then it was my father's new novel.' A lesser matter. 'Peter's a bit older than I. Seems younger, without seeming young. In any case, a dear man. Knows he's unfortunate, but doesn't see it as a card to play.'
    'He can't,' said Helen, 'be so very unlucky. If you saved his life.'
     
     

Part Two
     

5
     

     
    In harbour on the first morning, Exley saw the pastel villas on the mountainside, here and there among vegetation: looted, unroofed, their marzipan interiors lined with rot; some of them rebuilding under bamboo scaffolding. Looking out from shipboard, he realised that from those airy slopes there would be a grand view over the straits to the mainland. Obviously, the place to be.
    That same noon he stood by windows up at MacGregor Road, in the officers' quarters, while a sceptical soldier searched through papers for his name. While the soldier riffled coloured pages, Peter Exley looked down the green mountain to the town scribbled along the shore: noting the cathedral, the post office, the governor's villa; and the bank, which was higher than all these. It was much as he had supposed. Beyond the narrow harbour and the shipping there were small bleached mountains at the verge of Asia.
    He was aware of some consequential element that he had not identified. And with indifference realised it was beauty.
    There was no place for him at MacGregor Road, no record of his request. It would have been quiet up there and relatively cool; just below the fog line — damp, of course, with the green smell that Exley at first mistook for freshness and soon recognised as decay. But there had been a mistake and every room was taken.
    Redirected to the barracks, he went down unsurprised on the cable car in the afternoon heat. The July air was a blanket, summer weight. The barracks looked like Scutari. Presenting himself, he was led along a creaking verandah and up a soiled stair. Everywhere, the breath of mould.
    A corporal unlocked the door. There was a second, inner door, slatted and latched. Pledges of another presence were distributed about the room. At the centre of things, marooned on wooden floor, a tin box was stencilled with name and number. The better bed, by the window, was heaped with dirty laundry and overhung by a dingy clump of mosquito net. There was the quiescent menace of a gramophone.
    'Can't I get a room to myself, at least?'
    'Put you down, sir, soon's we got one. Bit of a wait, I'd say.' There was a fair-sized garrison in the colony — Buffs, Inniskillings, Ghurkas. In any event, no one would offer preference to Exley, who had no flair for attracting favours.
    The corporal told him the mess hours. Exley asked, 'Is there something like a library here?'
    'Any books get left, they put 'em on a shelf near the stairs. Mostly duds, I'd say.'
    It was 1947, mid-July. His pocket diary said 'Saint Swithin.' Exley took off his tunic and sat on the inferior bunk. His shirt stuck like a khaki skin. Overhead, there was the croak of a slow, ineffectual fan. Rails of light, red as electric elements, striped the shutters. Walls were distempered sallow. There were marks where heads had greasily rested, where furniture and kit had been stored, where hands had