More interesting to Shirley were the young RAF officers who were also part of the unit, skilled linguists with expertise in Chinese languages, who worked alongside local Chinese teachers, translators, and administrators. She was struck by the knowledgeability and social ease of these officers, “people who had had what used to be called a classical education, and who displayed this knowledge in the most marvellous, natural way.” One of these, not British but an officer in the British Army, was Alexis Vedeniapine, who would feature significantly in her life; two others, Christopher Cooper and Alan Green, also became important friends. Shirley was delighted at the willingness of Cooper and Vedeniapine in particular to recite and discuss poetry, as well as by her own ability to join them in this—“proof,” as she reflected later, that she was “not alone in the world,” that she was “not dreaming.” It seems that Vedeniapine could match Shirley’s extraordinary memory for poetry, and it is remarkable that almost as soon as she had left Australia, she had met others with whom she was so profoundly aligned. Chris Cooper later described Shirley as impressively cultivated and precociously well-read, and Alan Green recalled her sociability, lively manner, and “lovely face.”

Shirley and Vedeniapine had first met in early September 1947, on a day marked by “clarity of sky and air,” and soon were attached, if not publicly a couple. On New Year’s Day 1948 Shirley recorded in her diary, “Half day at work. Alec took me for a walk before lunch … we climbed a hillside into a hollow and he took me in his arms and kissed me, differently than before. It was warm and green and blue and peaceful, and we stayed there until lunch time—Happy New Year!” This diary reveals a very different relationship from the grave passion shared by Helen Driscoll and Aldred Leith in The Great Fire. The attraction between the young woman and older man is clear, but so too are the vast differences in their experiences and interests. While they shared a passion for poetry, Alec was also deeply connected to the local world of Hong Kong, to active and solitary pursuits, and to his friendships with other men—sailing with Dick Kindersley, taking long walks around Hong Kong and surrounding islands, fishing. These were not worlds Shirley could or would share. At thirty-two, Alec was nearly twice her age, clearly charmed by her intellect and bright beauty but also reluctant to consolidate a flirtation into more public form, in part at least because of the impropriety of their age difference and, no doubt, also with an eye to his position in the office and in the British community in Hong Kong. He raised with Chris Cooper his concern at Shirley’s “emotional instability and fretting,” indicating his reservations about their compatibility despite being engaged by her “mental abilities.” The romantic interludes recorded in her diary are not infrequent, but there was clearly some inconsistency in Alec’s responses, some vacillation, and Shirley, consumed by anxiety, longing, and a confusion driven by inexperience with intimacy and affairs of the heart, was shaken by their fleeting nature. This was her first significant emotional connection outside her family, and it perhaps lent an intensity that in turn further constrained Alec’s responses to her.

It was not all misery. In later years she recalled “Alec and I on foot over the hills from Aberdeen to Hong Kong, a lovely deserted path and prospect, a bird alighted on the path, and we were still. He said, low-voiced, ‘I think it’s a plover.’ Such pleasures were new to me. Respect and curiosity for Nature.” At the time, she’d been caught up in feeling. Her diary entries see her circling back again and again to the same points of elation and despair. In February: “Alec was good to me again. Although I don’t feel I can go on much more without something more definite. He is unfair. Why should he pick me up and toss me down like this? Please let it be different soon.” In March: “(Please, God.) I wish it didn’t look so appalling in black and white. I don’t feel that he’s obliged to return my feeling, but he has made the best of it as it suited him. This is awful. If he doesn’t ring this weekend, it’s all up, I think,” and then three days later, “a lovely day” at the Bank. “He took me in his arms and was suddenly wild-eyed and passionate and ‘wicked and loose’ … I am happy and hopeful.” Then in early April, “I’m struggling against this neglected feeling, knowing I have no right to be so, but oh Alec, am I not good enough?” Everything was intensified by the way the relationship was playing out in a very closed and constrained social world and across a very compressed stretch of time—by September, one short year after meeting Alec, she had left Hong Kong. While her inner world was being tormented by the peaks and troughs of adolescent romance, her social life in the privileged contours of colonial Hong Kong continued. It is notable that despite the intensity of her emotions, those around her appeared to have no idea of the romance, although there was some gentle ribbing from coworkers about “the eyes of Ahlex.” Outside work hours, she was attending parties, sometimes with her family or with friends from the office, sometimes with Alec, or going to dinners at the Tientsin, or the Parisian Grill, or King Fu, and lunches at the Clubhouse at Deep Water Bay. On days off she would join outings to beaches around the island—spectacular locations, less than an hour’s drive from Central, such as Shek O, Repulse Bay, Deep Water Bay, or Stanley—with Alan, Chris, Alec, and others from the office, sometimes conveyed by army jeep. Or she went walking.

Many years later she recalled meeting “at a gathering, a handsome, reserved, and pleasant person, still young, who was introduced as Miss Scott-Moncrieff,” of whom “it was at once explained, in her presence, that she was—the niece, was it, or a cousin?—of the great translator” of Proust, adding, “She was one of the few women to hold, then, a distinguished, and beneficent, position in the colony: and it occurred to me that she possibly wearied of her reflected glory.” Just as Shirley’s political understanding was developing as a consequence of her proximity to intelligence work and by virtue of simply being present while an event of the magnitude of the Chinese Civil War proceeded across the border, so too the boundaries of her cultural world were being extended by these associations. Alec was central to this, with his affinity for poetry, but also important was her friendship with Chris Cooper. Their correspondence over the next few crucial years, he in England, she in New Zealand and then New York, would open up for her a world of contemporary high culture—music, ballet, art—that was as yet only nascent. And this would be crucial to her maturity, as important as the experience of romantic love: a way of defining herself, finding imaginative connection and solace beyond the remit of her family.