Part Four

41

I returned to Singapore on the morning of 20 December and shortly afterwards issued a paper containing information of the Japanese tactics and instructions as to how they should be countered. In this I stressed that the first essential was rigid discipline and absolute steadiness and secondly, that the enemy’s out-flanking and infiltration tactics must not lead to withdrawals which should only take place on the order of higher authority. I suggested that the best method of defence might be for a holding group to be dug in astride the main artery of communication with striking forces on the flanks ready to attack as soon as the enemy made contact with the holding group. With a view to trying to curb the many wild rumours which were flying about, aggravated by the difficulty of finding out what really was happening, I ordered that the spreading of rumours and exaggerated reports of the enemy’s efficiency must be rigidly suppressed.

Lieutenant-General A. E. Percival,

The War in Malaya

JAPANESE BURNING KORAN IN NORTH

Refugees who have made their way out of Trengganu since the Japanese occupation bring a shocking story of sacrilege. They state that the Japanese broke into the Mohammedan religious school at Kuala Trengganu, capital of the state, ransacked it, threw the kitab-kitab (holy books) out of the window and desecrated the holy Koran. Further, they have set up their own idols in the Police Suran (place of worship) in Kuala Trengganu. This news, following on the bombing of the mosques in Penang and Kuala Lumpur, is causing Malays to recall bitterly that it is only a few weeks since the Tokio radio was broadcasting nightly assurances of special solicitude for Muslims and Muslim places of worship in Malay and elsewhere.

LULL IN MALAYA: NEW RAF SUCCESS

According to last night’s official communiqué, the Japanese have not been able to maintain their pressure on the Perak front, where our patrols have been active.

RAIDS ON KUALA LUMPUR

Since their first raid on Kuala Lumpur town on Friday the Japanese have returned regularly every day. On Tuesday there were five alerts. The raiders are always met by heavy ack-ack fire. As a result they have not dared appear directly over the town and have not dropped any bombs since last Friday.

Straits Times Thursday, 1 January 1942

Now the New Year of 1942 began and life in Singapore underwent yet another frightening metamorphosis. Little by little people had grown accustomed to the darkness of the blacked-out streets and the military road-blocks, though they had not ceased to be an inconvenience. But now air-raids, sporadic at first and usually aimed at the docks and airfields, came to remind Singapore’s inhabitants of the dangers they ran. And yet, when you thought about it, only a few days had passed since Singapore had been still enjoying the comfort and security of peace-time. How far away those pleasant days already seemed! These days, unless your character was unusually imperturbable, you found it hard to enjoy dining on the lawn of Raffles Hotel in the tropical night surrounded by the fan-shaped silhouettes of travellers’ palms. By now people preferred to dine inside: for one thing there was no light to read the menu by if you stayed outside; for another, although it was still just as enchanting to listen to the sighing of the warm breeze as it tossed the ruffled heads of the nibong palms against the stars high above you, you could no longer be quite sure that the dark shape of a Japanese bomber was not lurking like a panther in those tossing palms and watching you with yellow eyes as you put your spoon into a soufflé au fromage. Besídes, sitting out there by yourself, could you be altogether certain that you would not find yourself sharing your soufflé with a Japanese parachutist?

For Europeans, these days, work swallowed up everything. For no sooner had you finished at the office than you were obliged to report for an evening’s training with the passive defence and volunteer forces. If you were over the age of forty-one you now found yourself, unless exempted for some other essential work, serving with the volunteer police or firemen or with the Local Defence Corps. Nevertheless, it had taken Singapore’s second air-raid on 29 December, and those that followed in ever more rapid succession, to make a real dent in Singapore’s way of life. Sporting activities on the padang came to an end (to Matthew’s inexperienced eye not the least astonishing thing about Singapore had been the sight of thirty grown men engaged in a violently energetic game of rugby a mere few miles from the equator): the municipal engineering department had erected obstacles to deny such open spaces to aircraft or paratroops. Supplies of tinned food were brought up and people began to improvise air-raid shelters in their gardens or in the less fragile parts of their homes.

Outwardly, perhaps, not so much had changed. You could still pause almost anywhere in the city, just as you had always done, and buy a refreshing slice of pineapple, or a bunch of tiny, delicious bananas no bigger than the fingers of your hand, or even, if you were adventurous, scoop out the fragrant, heavenly, alarming flesh of the durian. Some people, no less adventurous, occasionally managed a round of golf under the air-raids, at least until golf links and club-house were taken over to be fortified by the Military despite a gallant rear-guard action by the Club Committee to save it for its members. Others sported and splashed in the wavelets at Tanjong Rhu while Japanese bombers raided Keppel Harbour across the water. Was this bravado or simply an illustration of the time it takes to change from the reality of peace to the new reality of war? Well, you were probably no less safe and a great deal more comfortable having a swim during an air-raid than sweltering in an improvised shelter.

The Major took tiffin one day in the first week of January with Dr Brownley at the Adelphi Hotel and was surprised to find that the hotel’s orchestra was still playing its usual lunchtime concert of old favourites. The only interruption to his conversation with the Doctor, whom he was trying to persuade to provide a mobile medical service for the Mayfair A.F.S. unit, came when a drunken Australian journalist blundered into their table, asked: ‘How’s the tucker?’ and blundered away again. The Major later glimpsed him vomiting into some palms in the lobby while the Swiss manager wrung his hands nearby. Still, considering it was wartime, it was not too much to put up with.

One thing, however, did come as a shock to the Major. He had expected that resentment towards the Forces, endemic for the past few years among European civilians, would be dissipated immediately by the opening of hostilities on the mainland. But on the contrary, it grew even more acute. The Military, it was felt, who were supposed to be defending Singapore’s commercial activities, vital as a source of produce for the Empire and for the earning of dollars from America, were doing everything to make business impossible by their high-handed requisitioning of land and property. If the Army had had its way it would have made off with a sizeable part of the labour force into the bargain, to build the camps and fortifications which they should be building for themselves! What indignation would presently be caused in Singapore when (in the third week of January) the Sunday Pictorial in Britain published what the Straits Times called ‘absurd allegations regarding whisky-swilling planters, indolent officials and greedy businessmen who refused to pay taxes.’

But as January pursues its course the civilians and the Military are at least united in one pastime in the increasingly devastated and dangerous city … they go to the cinema. They go to see Private Affairs with Nancy Kelly and Robert Cummings at the Cathay, or Bad Men of Missouri at the Alhambra, or Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator at the Roxy. Battered troops from up-country or new arrivals from Britain, Australia and India watch John Wayne in Dark Command at the Empire beside anxious and forlorn refugees from Penang and Kuala Lumpur. Together in the hot darkness they watch Joe E. Brown in So You Won’t Talk?, Mata Hari with Greta Garbo and Ramon Novarro, and Henry Fonda in The Return of Frank James which, despite the boom and thud of bombs and anti-aircraft guns filtering into the cinema, has had all traces of gun-play removed by the Singapore censor in order not to give ideas to the city’s Chinese gangsters. Perhaps as they sit there they are a little reassured by ‘the first drama of Uncle Sam’s new jump fighters’: Parachute Battalion with Robert Preston and Edmund O’Brien … but no doubt they find parachutes too close to reality and prefer Loretta Young in The Lady from Cheyenne: ‘It was a man’s world until a low-cut gown took over the town.’ They watch in silence with the light from the screen flickering on their strained faces. The week it is shown (by that time people will be wearing steel helmets in the stalls during air-raids) will see, on Tuesday, a massive raid by eighty-one Japanese Navy bombers on the Tanglin and Orchard. Road district and, on Wednesday, an even more devastating raid on Beach Road.

Pakai angku punia sarong muka! Put on your gas-masks! Jangan tembak sampai depat hukum! Don’t fire until you receive orders!’ exclaimed the Major, stifling a yawn that threatened to have its way with him. ‘Jaga itu periok api … bedil itu sudah letup. Beware of bombs: the shell has exploded!’ Such was the heat and humidity that a prodigious effort was required merely to keep one’s eyes open. His head began to droop once more on to his chest. He forced himself to straighten up and say: ‘Gali parit untok lima kaki tinggi. Kapal terbang tedak boleh naik sabab musim ribot. Dig a trench about five feet high. The aeroplanes can’t go up owing to stormy weather …’ Again his head began to droop. There was a sudden crash and he sat up with a start. Dupigny had just hurled a book across the room at a fat, ginger cockroach which was making its way, glistening with health and horribly alert, across the wall of the outer office where they were sitting. The book had missed, however, and the cockroach darted away at an unnatural speed.

Revived by the noise, the Major put down the list of useful Malay phrases he had been trying to master and walked across to the window. The rain was pelting down on the broad, green banana leaves and sweeping down the drive in a river towards the storm-drain.

‘Listen to this, Brendan,’ chuckled Dupigny, who was sprawled in a rattan chair reading the Straits Times. ‘ “Newly arrived. Sandbags! Only a limited quantity available. Apply Hagemeyer Trading Company Ltd.’ They have a vigorous commercial instinct, the people of Singapore!’

‘Undoubtedly, François, the Japanese have gained some initial advantage,’ said the Major who had been following his own train of thought. ‘But I doubt if they will get much further.’

Sans blague!

‘They had the advantage of surprise and that counts for a great deal. But the further they drive our chaps back, the more concentrated our forces become … like a spring which is being compressed. In due course we’ll spring back all the more powerfully.’

Sans blague!

‘Would you mind not saying “sans blague” all the time? It gets on my nerves.’

‘Sorry.’

It had grown very dark outside and the rain fell so heavily that it filled the room with a noise like a roll of drums. Through a crack in the floorboards the Major could see a sheet of rainwater sliding under the bungalow between the pillars on which it stood. From time to time a flash of lightning lit up Dupigny’s face across the room, a cynical mass of wrinkles. He had put down the newspaper which he could no longer see to read.

‘What a storm!’ said Matthew, wandering in from his office next door and joining the Major at the window.

‘They don’t usually last very long,’ said the Major. He added presently: ‘By the way, Mr Wu was here earlier and said he had heard there had been more trouble up-country.’ The Major, though he did not say so, was afraid that Malaya might be beginning to fall to pieces. Nor was it simply a question of the military situation. He explained to Matthew what he had heard.

Last week there had been talk of Australian troops wrecking a hotel somewhere. Now rumours had reached Mr Wu, who had business contacts in Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh and Kuantan, that civil disorder, looting and inter-racial strife was spreading like a shock-wave in front of the advancing Japanese bayonets. In some places the retreating British troops, instructed to destroy stores that might be of value to the enemy, had set the example by looting jewellers and liquor shops, eagerly assisted by the local population and even by the police who had discarded their uniforms and joined in with a will. Open season had been declared on anything of value left behind. A cloud of locusts descended on every abandoned European bungalow: in no time it was stripped of everything down to light-bulbs, door-handles and bathroom fittings. When European bungalows had all been stripped the looters turned to those abandoned by rich Chinese, Indians and Malays … and, presently, to those that had not been abandoned, stripping them regardless and, if the owner did not promptly produce his valuables, torturing him until he did. Sometimes, according to Mr Wu’s all too circumstantial and convincing account, Chinese looters would wear masks, or pretend to be Japanese soldiers; sometimes two rival bands of looters would arrive to sack the same premises, which now included Government rice godowns, Land offices and Customs premises, and do battle with each other for the right to pillage. And all this accompanied by wholesale violence and rape, not to mention old scores being paid off. The country was foundering in anarchy!

‘What do you expect to happen?’ asked Dupigny, dismissing the matter with a shrug. ‘I do not see why you should be surprised.’

‘But wait, François. The laws of a country are merely the wish of people to live in a certain way. Remove the laws for a few days and you don’t expect anarchy to result overnight, any more than by abolishing road regulations you would expect motorists to pick at random which side of the road they would drive on. Laws aren’t a means of coercing a population of wild animals but an agreement between people … D’you see what I mean? But in that case why has this moral vacuum appeared in the space between the two armies where the rule of law is suspended? It must mean that all these people looting and raping don’t consider themselves to belong to our community at all!’

‘But exactly!’ cried Dupigny and a flash of lightning lit up his sardonic smile. ‘In a country like Malaya such an ideal community is impossible because people belong to different races and only have self-interest in common. A brotherhood of man? Rubbish! But let us not complain, self-interest is the surest source of wealth as your Mr Smith has so brilliantly demonstrated.’

‘Do you really believe, François, that until now our British laws have merely been preventing people here from doing what they would most like to do, namely: attack, rob and rape their neighbours? Come now!’

‘Certainly. Today you have the proof!’

Instead of replying, the Major stooped and held out his fingers to The Human Condition who was hesitating prudently a few feet away, as if afraid that the Major might be about to scoop him up and drop him into an incinerator. After some moments of interior debate the animal crept a little closer and faintly wagged its wretched tail. The Major sighed. Outside the window the first thin shaft of sunlight broke through the cloud and hung quivering in the murky gloom of the drive, at the same time striking emerald sparks from a dripping banana leaf.

Matthew, who had spent a little time with his hands in his pockets at the window, staring out in a gloomy reverie at the drenched foliage, had become interested in this discussion. He remembered with what pleasure he had watched the mingling of races on the dance-floor at The Great World. It was surely true that to build a nation out of Malaya’s plural society some greater ideal than the profit of plantation owners, merchants and assorted entrepreneurs combined with the accumulation of wealth by the labour force, was required. What was needed was a new spirit … the spirit that had animated people at Geneva in the early days before everything had turned sour. Matthew began, haltingly, to explain this to the Major and Dupigny. It was simply a question of breaking out of old habits of thought! It was so easy, given the right atmosphere, for people to change the way they approached each other! Even apparently self-interested people were capable of it. It was like … like … He groped the air with his fingers, searching for an example. Yes, it was like someone in the empty compartment of a train who pulls down the blinds and puts his suitcases on the seat to prevent another passenger sharing it with him. Yet if, once installed, the newcomer should become ill the original occupant will spare no effort to help him, will take off his jacket, perhaps, to spread it over him, will stop the train and bully officials into coming to his companion’s assistance, and go to all manner of trouble! It was a fact! And truly there was no earthly reason why all human affairs should not be conducted in this manner! It was just as available to people as conduct based on suspicion and self-interest. Even with the Japanese it would have been possible if they had not been infected with our own cynical approach to power.

‘I refuse to believe that self-interest is the best source of prosperity. It only seems that way because we’ve never been able to break out of this bad habit with which we’ve been shackled by our history. Men are capable of becoming brothers, whatever you say, François. And I’m sure you’ll find, once this dreadful war is over, that thousands of people of different races have been willing to risk their lives for each other!’

While Matthew, stuttering with excitement, had been stating his belief, his companions had been listening, the Major dubiously, Dupigny with derision. Now Dupigny got to his feet: it was time for his late afternoon siesta on the table in the Board Room, the only room in the building which possessed an efficient fan. On his way out he paused to pat Matthew on the shoulder, saying with a laugh: ‘You might just as well expect stockbrokers to be ready to die for the Stock Exchange!’

42

It was in these days that members of the Mayfair AFS unit first began to be seen at fires here and there in the city with their glistening new trailer-pump. Nothing spectacular at first while they were learning the business; a shop-house or a godown, perhaps, set on fire by an air-raid on the docks. A tiny convoy would set off led by the Major’s Lagonda driven by the Major himself, keeping an eye on the trailer-pump dodging and swaying in the rear-view mirror, and followed by Mr Wu’s ancient Buick, crammed with helmeted figures and equipment. Sometimes, as the fires grew bigger, they would find a number of other units there, too, and as they arrived they would have to bump over several hose-ramps while trying to locate the officer in charge of the fire. Quite often this would turn out to be a man called Adamson who, they learned from some of the regular firemen, had an unusual reputation for skill in beating back or outflanking fires that threatened to get out of control … the reputation of a general, one might have thought. His appearance, though, was disappointingly ordinary … a rather anonymous-looking individual in his forties with bristly grey hair and a manner that suggested more a curious by-stander than a general on a battlefield. Matthew, in particular, surveyed him with interest, wondering how it was that so many legends hat attached themselves to him.

At one godown fire, while Matthew was talking to a man called Evans from the Central Fire Station in Hill Street, there came a shout of ‘Stand from under!’

‘That means the façade is about to topple,’ Evans explained and together they joined the other men drifting back to a safer distance. Evans, however, was watching Adamson who still lingered beneath the building, staring up at it, hands in pockets. There was a story, he told Matthew, that Adamson had once been caught at just such a moment under a tall façade as it toppled outwards over him. Because it had been too late to run he had calmly estimated where an open window would fall, had changed his position slightly and then stood still. The façade had fallen neatly around him, leaving him untouched.

‘Great Scott!’ Matthew gazed at Adamson, deeply impressed by such sang-froid, but at the same time half suspecting that this might be just a story which old hands told to new recruits like himself.

Despite the satisfaction Matthew experienced these days in the knowledge that he was doing his bit for the Colony, and even putting himself at risk for it, he was still not altogether pleased with himself. His relations with the Blackett family had been seriously clouded by the unfortunate manner in which he had announced that he did not want to marry Joan. How could he have done such a thing? The Blacketts were his father’s life-long friends! Now he flushed with embarrassment at the mere recollection of his dreadful behaviour. Naturally, he had written notes of apology to Walter, to Mrs Blackett, and to Joan herself (how could he have been so insensitive as to reject the poor girl in public!) … but he had heard nothing and did not expect to be forgiven for his appalling lapse.

He would have written a note to Monty, too, but Monty had turned up in person before he could do so and, as a matter of fact, did not appear to be particularly put out. Monty, indeed, was inclined to look on the bright side and said, chuckling: ‘Boy, you’ve really put your foot in it this time. They aren’t very pleased with you at home, to put it mildly! But at least you’ve got rid of all the bloody bridesmaids! Frankly, old chap, I hand it to you … I didn’t think you had it in you.’ But Matthew was not to be consoled. It was true that he did not now have to marry Joan … but such was his remorse that he would almost have preferred to have done so.

Presently, a hastily written message from Walter did arrive and Matthew opened it expecting recriminations. But to his surprise the message did not even mention his lapse and one might even have supposed, reading it, that Walter had already forgotten about it. The note begged Matthew, in the name of his country and of everything he held dear, to reconsider his refusal to impersonate Continuity in Blackett and Webb’s jubilee parade. ‘Since the loss of Penang,’ wrote Walter, ‘it has become more necessary than ever to shore up the morale of the Asiatic communities in the Colony by a display of firmness and a reminder of our past association which has been so fruitful to them.’ Because of ‘recent events’ it had been necessary to postpone the jubilee parade and celebrations, but ‘any day now’ final arrangements would be made. In the meantime, Matthew was asked to come with the Major and Dupigny to a dress rehearsal for the parade to make sure that everybody knew what was expected of him.

This note had been dictated in a rather discursive style and typed on Walter’s office note-paper. Walter had added a cryptic postscript in ink, however, which stated: ‘I hear young Lang-field has not been doing too badly as a fireman. What d’you think? Perhaps he is not as bad as the rest of that gang?’ Matthew was relieved to get Walter’s note, though a little puzzled by the reference to Nigel Langfield: Walter musing aloud, it seemed. He hastily sent a note in return, agreeing to do anything Walter wanted. After his lapse there was nothing else for him to do, after all.

His conscience lightened somewhat by this exchange, Matthew decided to take the afternoon off. His efforts to grasp the complexities of the rubber business took second place these days, in any case, to his duties as a fireman. Besides, he still hardly knew Singapore.

The Major, who had to pick up an order of books from Kelly and Walsh’s, dropped him near Raffles Place and he set off, hands in pockets, with no particular destination. First he walked down Market Street. It was here, he remembered, that Ehrendorf had his flat but as to which number it was in the street he had no idea. As he strolled along he was suddenly enveloped in a delightful smell of cloves and cinnamon which hung outside a spice merchant’s. On the opposite side of the street his eye was caught by the money-lenders shops and he paused for a moment to stare in wonder and dismay at the white-garmented figures lurking in those dim interiors. What did this glimpse of money-lenders remind him of? Yes. He moved on once more, pondering the assertion that self-interest is the most efficient producer of wealth, that what an undeveloped tropical country most needed were entrepreneurs like his father and like Walter. Many people believed, he was aware, that no matter what an individual entrepreneur might accomplish in the way of exploitation or abuse of native labour, his presence was still beneficial to the country as the most effective means by which the local population could begin to accumuate capital of its own. This paradox, which was no doubt true within limits, was accompanied by a cynical companion in the form of another assertion: namely, that human beings would only produce their best efforts when they were working, not for the community in which they lived, but for themselves. This Matthew refused to believe!

He had paused, muttering under his breath, in the doorway of a metalwork shop where he found himself gazing at his own perspiring, bespectacled face upside down in a gleaming concave bowl. Inside the shop he could see a man on his hands and knees cutting out a long strip of metal to make a bucket; another man, cross-legged, sat on the floor hammering rivets into another strip which had been bent into a cylinder. Beside them glistened a pile of newly minted buckets. To produce such handsome buckets without even a work-bench, using only primitive tools, seemed to him miraculous.

He walked on at random, now northwards, now westwards. He passed a sign which read Nanyang Dentist and the dentist himself, perhaps, sitting in his white coat on the pavement smoking a cigarette. A ginger cat with a docked tail crossed his path and slipped hopefully under the bead-hung entrance to the North Pole Creamery. A Chinese song blared tinnily from a wireless somewhere above his head in the forest of poles and washing; two voices gabbled in different languages riddled with atmospheric from two other wirelesses nearby. He passed on to the street corner where a Chinese funeral, which he at first took for a parade, was getting down to business outside a shop-house. A framed photograph of the dead man had been set up on a table on the pavement, a prosperous-looking fellow wearing the most formal of Western blue suits and white shirts; two tall lamps swathed in sackcloth for the occasion flanked the photograph: piles of oranges and apples and bundles of smoking joss-sticks stood in front of it. At the side of this table was another; Matthew found himself confronted with a great lobster-coloured pig’s mask complete with ears and flaring nostrils, crabs, whole naked chickens, some squashed as flat as plates, very greasy-looking, others with their yellow waxen heads horribly bent back over their bodies.

Matthew looked at his watch: he would soon have to be getting back to the Mayfair for something to eat before the night’s watch. He lingered for a moment, however, to inspect the paper models of a motor-car, a wireless, a refrigerator and other useful articles that the dead man would be taking on his journey, thinking: ‘After all, if these are the things people want and entrepreneurs like my father help them to get them …’ He wondered what the head man had thought of it all, whether he had been satisfied. Here he was, presumably, in this impressive coffin which might, to judge by its size, have been hollowed out of a substantial tree trunk, each end swept up like the prow of a ship and standing on trestles which advertised, in English and Chinese, the name and telephone number of the undertaker. A line of professional mourners dressed in crudely stitched sackcloth sat on the kerb, smoking cigarettes and looking disaffected. A small boy hammered on a tin drum and was now joined by a rather down-at-heel brass band of elderly men in white uniforms who struck up raggedly for a few moments. An aeroplane roared by very low overhead and the mourners looked up apprehensively … but it was British, a Catalina flying-boat. Matthew walked on thoughtfully. As he walked, hands in pockets, he felt someone take his arm. Looking round he saw Miss Chiang’s smiling face.

‘Vera! Where have you been? Why haven’t you been back to the Mayfair?’

Vera’s smile disappeared; she looked a trifle upset. She said with a shrug: ‘They told me not to come back.’

‘Who told you?’

‘A man from Mr Blackett’s office.’ She shrugged again. ‘It does not matter. It is not in the least “pressing”. Tell me about yourself … I’m so glad to see you are now well again. What a terrible fever! You gave me such a fright. I was afraid you might “kick the bucket”.’

‘But why did they tell you not to come back?’

‘They say my job has been finished. They bring me suitcase and money and a letter of thanks signed by Miss Blackett. I think it is because she is jealous of my beauty.’

‘D’you really think so? Lumme!’ Matthew mopped his perspiring face with a handkerchief.

‘Yes,’ went on Vera, looking pretty and malicious, yet at the same time more innocent than ever, ‘it is because also she does not have my command of foreign languages and because my breasts are bigger than hers. She does not have my poise, either, which I have probably inherited from my mother … I think I told you my mother was Russian princess, forced to show “clean heels” during Revolution. Well, there … it is not worth bothering about.’

Meanwhile, they had strolled on together and, after a moment’s hesitation, Vera had taken his arm again and her light hand resting in the hollow of his elbow caused a delicate warmth to flow into him. Some women, he could not help thinking, were extraordinarily good at touching you, while others did so as if they had had a recently dislocated arm (no doubt women found the same about men). Vera’s touch was as distinctive as her voice. At the end of the street, however, they discovered that they were obliged to go in different directions, which seemed a pity. They lingered there for a moment.

‘You must halt …’ said Vera with a sigh. ‘I must go on because my silk-worms are hungry.’

‘What? You have silk-worms?’ cried Matthew, thinking: ‘How delightfully Chinese!’

‘Oh no, here in Singapore it is too hot for silk-worms.’ She smiled flirtatiously. ‘It is a line from an old Chinese song about a woman who is separated from her lover.’

‘Well, let me see …’ Matthew again looked at his watch. ‘Can I invite you to a cup of tea?’

‘Thank you, but first I must visit a friend who is dying. Will you come with me?’

Presently, Matthew found himself standing in a vast dimly lit shed, blinking and polishing his spectacles; but even when he had put them on again, such was the contrast with the brightness outside, he still could not see very well. Vera had set off down a sort of aisle on each side of which rose tier after tier of shadowy racks, as in a store-house or wine-cellar. Matthew followed her, stepping uncertainly. There was a smell of humanity here and a faint, twittering murmur of voices.

As his vision improved he saw that the racks on either side were occupied by recumbent forms, some of which stirred slightly as he passed but for the most part lying still … Eyes followed him incuriously, the sunken eyes of very elderly, emaciated people; here and there he made out a somewhat younger face. Vera explained to him that this was a Chinese ‘dying-house’ where lonely people came to die. He had not wanted to come; he had tried to explain to Vera that he had only just finished watching a funeral. It seemed to him that his life had taken a decidely lugubrious turn all of a sudden. No, he would definitely prefer to wait for her outside.

But as they were walking Vera had told him a little about the old man she was going to visit. He had befriended her on the boat that had taken her from Shanghai to Singapore (that same boat on which Miss Blackett and her mother had been travelling), had given her a little money and had helped her to find her feet; his own children had died or disappeared in one of the civil wars that had swept back and forth over China since the fall of the Manchu dynasty. While talking about this man, to whom she was bringing a little parcel of food, Vera happened to mention that until he had grown too old to work he had lived by tapping his few rubber trees on a smallholding near Layang Layang in Johore. Matthew had pricked up his ears at this and exclaimed: ‘That’s near my own estate!’ And so, despite his misgivings, he had decided to enter the dying-house with her. Now, blundering between these racks of moribund people in the gloom, he felt like Orpheus descending into the underworld.

It was not only the lonely who came to die here, explained Vera in a low voice, grasping him by the sleeve, but a great many others, too. People were brought here to die by their families in order to spare the home from the bad luck that comes when somebody dies there …

‘I must say, that sounds a bit heartless!’

Yes, and yet it was accepted by the person who was dying as the best thing to do and the custom had been carried on, perhaps, for generations. And no doubt those who came here from the land of the living to bring food and water to their dying relations would in due course come to spend their own last days or hours here, rather than take up room in one of the crowded tenement cubicles or boats on the river … It was very sad, certainly, but it was moving, too, to see the way these shelves of dying people accepted their fate. Vera’s dark eyes searched Matthew’s face to see whether he understood. He nodded cautiously though, as a matter of fact, he was not very keen on hearing of people ‘accepting their fate’. Vera seemed to him extraordinarily full of life by contrast with the trays of shadowy expiring figures on either side. ‘What a dismal way to end up though!’

‘How attractive he is!’ Vera was thinking. ‘How stooping and shortsighted! What deliciously round shoulders and unhealthy complexion!’ She gazed at him in wonder, reflecting that there was no way in which he could be improved. Indeed, she could hardly keep her eyes off him. For the fact was that Vera had been brought up, as Chinese girls had been for centuries, to find stooping, bespectacled, scholarly-looking young men attractive, and the more literary the better; no doubt there was an economic motive originally buried somewhere beneath this tradition of finding attractive qualities in poor physical specimens like Matthew (although, actually, he was quite strong): for until recently with the fall of the Ch’ing dynasty all China’s most powerful administrators and officials, a source of prosperity and glory for their families as well as themselves, had been chosen traditionally by competitive examinations in literary subjects open to rich and poor alike. Already though, a willingness to have their heart-strings plucked in such a way was beginning to seem old-fashioned to the young women of the New China. Yes, already by January 1942, young men with rippling muscles, fists of steel and a good posture were beginning to barge these spindle-legged weaklings aside and leave them grovelling in the dust for their spectacles while they, instead, installed themselves in maidenly dreams from Shanghai to Sinkiang. How lucky then for Matthew, who was just in time to catch Vera’s eye. He would not have cut much ice with one of these others. As a matter of fact, she had already begun to notice one or two young men with fists of steel who perhaps did not look too unprepossessing.

43

Vera had paused for a moment to talk to a middle-aged man sitting on his heels beside someone on the lowest rack; he was wearing a cheap, crumpled European suit whose pockets were bulging with packages of various kinds; a stethoscope hung over his open-necked white shirt. As he was talking he looked up briefly at Matthew and smiled: his face, which was deeply lined and cross-hatched, conveyed a strong impression of sensitivity and strength of character. As they walked on again, it occurred to Matthew that if you could tell someone’s character by his face, even without sharing a culture or language with him, perhaps people of different nations and races were not so deeply divided from each other as they appeared to be, that whatever Dupigny might think, there was such a thing as shared humanity, and that with one or two minor adjustments different nations and communities could live in harmony with each other, concerning themselves with each other’s welfare.

The doctor she had just spoken to, Vera explained, devoted all his spare time and money to treating the inmates of the dying-house who could not otherwise afford medical attention.

‘Of course he does!’ exclaimed Matthew excitedly. ‘You only have to look at his face to know that!’ He would hardly have believed her if she had suggested anything else. Oppressed as he was by Dupigny’s cynical views on human nature, he felt quite delighted to have stumbled on this lonely philanthropist. Vera, meanwhile, was indicating in a whisper that those inhabitants of the dying-house who were actually expiring were brought down to the floor level because it was believed that anyone below a dying person would be visited by bad luck.

After a moment of uncertainty while she peered in the gloom at one elderly Chinese face after another (each shrivelled and puckered like an old apple and, to Matthew, almost indistinguishable) Vera had made her selection and was kneeling by a frail figure where it was darkest at the end of the row. Matthew approached, too, and gazed with interest and sympathy at the wizened head which lay, not on a pillow, but on a small bundle, perhaps of clothing. At the touch of Vera’s hand on his arm, the old man’s eyes opened slowly. He surveyed her calmly, remotely, showing no sign of surprise or animation. But presently he murmured something. A faint conversation ensued. Once, very slowly, his eyes moved towards Matthew. Vera’s parcel contained a small bowl of rice, mushrooms and sea-slugs. A boy appeared with a pot of tea and Vera gave him a coin. Meanwhile the old man’s withered hand had been groping feebly at his bedside and presently closed over a pair of chopsticks. Vera took them from him and helped him to eat a few mouthfuls from the bowl.

When he had finished eating the old man again looked at Matthew and said something to Vera. Vera, too, looked at Matthew and replied with a smile, saying then in English: ‘I tell him you are in rubber business.’

The old man spoke again, this time to Matthew, in a faint, grumbling voice.

‘What does he say?’

‘He ask you where your estates are … I tell him you son of Blackett and Webb.’

Matthew nodded and smiled winningly at the old Chinese, delighted to think that he was at last, thanks to Vera, coming into contact with the real roots of life in Malaya, not just its top dressing of Europeans.

But despite Matthew’s winning smiles the old fellow on his death-bed did not altogether give the impression of being won over. Indeed, he had begun to fidget restlessly on his tray, muttering indignantly. Matthew was not sure but he thought he could make out the words ‘Brackett and Webb’ recurring in the old chap’s mutterings. Vera was listening attentively: her face showed concern.

‘Well, oh dear … He say you swindle smallholders. He says European estates swindle him and other smallholders …’

‘Oh really, Vera!’ scoffed Matthew. ‘The poor old blighter’s just wool-gathering. But I can see my presence is upsetting him so perhaps I’d better …’ He was afraid that the elderly Chinese, who was now searching crossly with trembling, skeletal hands for something in the pile of rags he was using as a pillow, might suffer some terminal seizure brought on by excitement and indignation. To judge by his wasted body and blue lips it would not take very much to capsize the frail craft in which the old chap was now trying to navigate the final stages of his life’s voyage. Still, something caused Matthew to linger. Until now he had not given much thought to native smallholders. Their smallholdings seldom amounted to more than a few acres, at most. And yet, now he thought about it, these native smallholdings together produced nearly half of Malaya’s rubber and covered almost a million and a quarter acres! ‘What’s he saying now?’ he asked uneasily.

‘He says British steal money from his rubber trees.’

‘How did they do that?’ asked Matthew dubiously. Vera turned back to the old man who had fallen back now, exhausted by his efforts to find whatever it was he had been looking for. He was no longer looking at Matthew but into the distance; his chest hardly seemed to move but still that faint, grumbling voice went on and on, rising and falling, almost like the wind when it sighs under a doorway.

‘He says the inspector did not give him proper share of rubber to sell when he came to look at his trees for Restriction Scheme …’

‘I suppose he means when his production was being assessed before the scheme started … to see what his share of the total export rights would be. All right, go on.’

‘It was the same with other smallholders in this village, too. Inspector says he tells a lie how much rubber his trees are making, that they are too thickly planted to make so much rubber. He says inspectors are Europeans who work for the estates and do not want smallholders to get their proper share …’

‘Well, good gracious! Tell him … tell him …’ But Matthew could not think what Vera should tell him. ‘What a disagreeable old codger!’ he thought, taken aback by this list of complaints. ‘You’d think that at death’s door he’d have better things to think about. There might be some truth in it, mind you … but all the same!’ Matthew had discovered that he did not mind being critical of the British himself, but when a foreigner was critical, that was different. And, after all, he had ventured into this decidedly creepy place merely to pay his respects to the old blighter!

But in spite of natural feelings of indignation that the old chap should pick a quarrel with him on what was really a social occasion (paying of respects to someone on the point of cashing in his chips), there was an aspect of the matter which Matthew, in spite of himself, did find rather interesting. For he had already been struck by the fact there there was one significant difference between the production of rubber and the production of most other things … namely, there was little advantage in cost to those who operated on a big scale with several hundred or more acres. Those who produce corn, say, or motor-cars on a large scale can usually do so more cheaply than their smaller competitors. Not so with rubber where a method of mass-production using machinery had yet to be discovered. If anything, the native smallholder, who as well as tapping his few rubber trees could very often keep himself by growing fruit and vegetables and raising a few chickens, should be able to produce rubber more cheaply than the European estates which were obliged to pay and feed a large work-force of tappers, weeders, foremen and other estate workers, not to mention the even more expensive European managers, agents, secretaries and, ultimately, company directors and shareholders.

Matthew now remembered the discussion he had had with Ehrendorf (it seemed ages ago but was, in fact, only a few days) at The Great World, when they had been trying to decide to what extent the coming of Western capital to Britain’s tropical colonies had had the benefits that were claimed for it. Well, the relationship between the European estates and the native smallholders seemed to throw an interesting light on that discussion. It was obvious that in most cases, although natives could be employed by Western enterprise, they lacked the knowledge, skill and capital to compete directly with it. But in the case of rubber, by a happy coincidence this was not so. There was nothing in the growing and tapping of trees, in the coagulation of latex by adding acid, or in the mangling and smoking of the resulting rubber sheets, that could not be done as easily by an illiterate Malay or Chinese as by a graduate of a British agricultural college. If the Colonial Office and the Government here really had the interests of their native subjects at heart, and not merely their exploitation as cheap labour, they could hardly have been presented with a better opportunity of demonstrating it by promoting and defending their interests! But wait! What was this he was hearing (for the old man’s quavering sing-song, while Matthew had been brooding on these matters, had not ceased its gentle sighing like the wind coming under the door)?

‘He says that European estates were given an extra share for trees that were too young to make rubber … Smallholders were given nothing.’ Vera looked at him helplessly, embarrassed by this litany of complaints. ‘He says European inspectors never looked properly at trees. He says there were only twenty inspectors for whole of Malaya. He says nobody inspected the estates. The estates told the Controller of Rubber how much share they wanted and Controller did as they say. He says Controller of Rubber was friendly to estates, not friendly to smallholders!’

‘Quite true, sir,’ piped up another quavering voice at Matthew’s elbow, causing him to start violently and peer into the gloom where another of the shadowy cadavers, hitherto lying supine on the lowest rack and displaying no-signs of life, had now collected up two sets of bones and thrown them over the side of his tray; after dangling uncertainly for a while they anchored themselves to the floor and proved to be legs; then, with a further scraping of bones, their owner levered himself politely to his feet and stood swaying beside Matthew. ‘Quite true, sir. Controller of Rubber listen only to European estates. He have five men on his committee from estates … only one smallholder! On his Rubber Regulation Committee he have twenty-seven men from estates, still only one from smallholders. And yet smallholders produce half country’s rubber! That is not fair, sir. It is disgusting. Quite true, sir.’ And he sank back with a moan into the shadows and a moment later there came a faint rattling sound. ‘Oh dear,’ thought Matthew, ‘but still, he’s probably had a good innings.’

Meanwhile, the speaker’s place had been taken by other shadowy figures and Vera, tugging at his arm, was anxious to gain his attention because the sighing, sing-song voice of her friend had not ceased all this time and by now had built up a considerable backlog of complaints. ‘He says Rubber Research Institute run by Government does not help smallholders, it helps only estates. He says smallholders pay for Institute from taxes just like European estates, but Institute only gives new, very good rubber plants to estates! What they call ‘budwood” …’

‘He means these new high-yielding clones?’

‘Yes, budwood … he means new clones … He telling truth!’ sang a chorus of skeletons and moribunds who had crowded around Matthew and were tugging at his garments to attract his attention …

‘He says smallholders producing more rubber per acre than estates but given much smaller share!’

‘Look here, Vera, I’m afraid I shall have to be going now. I’m on duty this evening and I’m late already …’

‘He says bloody big swindle … he says …’

For the past few moments, extenuated though he was by his long list of complaints, Vera’s friend had resumed his petulant search in the bundle of rags he was using as a pillow; now, with a final effort which seemed as if it might capsize him completely, his trembling fingers had fastened on what they were looking for. This proved to be a yellowing page of newsprint which he held up, quivering, to Matthew. Matthew took it, straining his eyes in the half-light to see what it was. He could just make out that it was the editorial opinion of The Planter and that the date on the top of the page was June 1930. ‘I’m afraid I can’t quite see what it says,’ he murmured apologetically. But one of the skeletons at his shoulder, with a prodigious effort which seemed to drain him of his last resources of energy, had succeeded in dragging the head of a match against the sandpaper of a matchbox held in the shaking hands of two of his companions. The match flared. Matthew read aloud as rapidly as he could …

‘ “In the hands of the producers of budwood …” ’

‘He means Government Research Institute …’

‘I say, please don’t interrupt me because otherwise I won’t be able to finish this before the match goes out,’ protested Matthew. ‘Well where was I … “In the hands of the producers of budwood lies the decision whether rubber planting will, in the far and remote future, become a native industry, or remain an asset of immense value to those European races to whose administrative skill and financial acumen … (Oh dear, I don’t like the sound of this) … the development of Malaya and of the Dutch East Indies has been due …” ’

‘More, sir, more!’ croaked his audience.

‘ “… It is the honest unbiased opinion of many leading men outside the rubber industry that the less the smallholder has to do with rubber the better it will be in the long run for himself and for all others engaged in rubber production …” ’ The match died. Matthew was left with the piece of paper in his fingers. He sighed.

All around him in the semi-darkness, as if summoned by the last trump for a final dispensation of justice over the doings of this imperfect world, supine figures were sitting up and casting off their shrouds and bandages, while others were clambering down from the tiers of shelves on which they had been stretched. He sighed again and looked down at his watch as they crowded round him.

44

Towards the end of the year Sir Robert Brooke-Popham had been replaced as Commander-in-Chief Far East by General Pownall. Although he had been on friendly terms with Brooke-Popham and his successor was unknown to him, Walter was nevertheless relieved to see the departure of his friend for it had grown increasingly clear that Brooke-Popham was not comfortable in the rôle to which he had been assigned. But if this change of commanders had been expected to exert a beneficial effect on the course of the campaign there was no immediate sign of it, at least to the eyes of a civilian onlooker. By now, in any case, the most crucial military decisions had to be taken within the borders of Malaya itself, and thus the responsibility for making them fell to General Percival and his staff at Malaya Command.

The departure of Brooke-Popham did have a disadvantage for Walter, though, in that it removed the one person from whom he could have found out, in general if not in particular, how the campaign was going. If there was going to be trouble in Singapore, and despite the confident tone of the daily communiqués it was growing increasingly clear that there was going to be, Walter wanted to make sure that his womenfolk were removed to a place of safety in plenty of time. But he was not only worried about his wife, Joan and Kate: he was also worried about the rubber which still crammed his godowns at the docks, for the greater part of which he had still been unable to arrange shipping. To make matters worse, this rubber was increasingly in danger from air-raids. He would have liked to have taken Brooke-Popham for a stroll round the Orchid Garden and asked him, man to man, when RAF reinforcements were going to arrive and do something about these raids. Because something would have to be done about them, that much was clear. Otherwise the whole of Singapore would go up in flames and nobody could do a thing about it. He would have liked to approach, if not Brooke-Popham, then someone on Percival’s staff. But Malaya Command did not have much time for Walter these days. They were too busy doing whatever it was they were doing up-country. ‘Not like it was a few months ago,’ he grumbled to his wife, ‘when they were willing enough to drink my pahits.’

Mrs Blackett herself was frantic with worry for her younger brother, Charlie, who had gone to rejoin his regiment across the Causeway and had not been seen since. This was not such a bad thing, in Walter’s view, but he did what he could to allay her fears, pointing out that it was perfectly normal for soldiers not to be heard from when they were fighting the enemy, particularly in the jungle. Could he not approach General Percival and ask him to have Charlie sent back to Singapore? she wanted to know. ‘My dear, I don’t even know the fellow,’ Walter replied, showing signs of exasperation, ‘and even if I did I could hardly ask him that. It might just be possible, if I knew Percival, to ask him to move Charlie towards the enemy, but I couldn’t possibly ask him to move him in the opposite direction. He’s a soldier, my dear. That’s his job. That’s what he’s there for. I can’t see why you should want him not to do his blessed job!’

‘But surely, Walter,’ cried Mrs Blackett, close to tears. ‘There must have been some terrible fighting … I hear that wounded men are arriving every day at the railway station by the hundreds and if the Japanese have captured Penang …’

‘Percival has too much on his mind, Sylvia, and there’s an end of it,’ said Walter crossly.

‘But you don’t know if you haven’t tried!’

Walter, however, was quite right. General Percival did have a great deal on his mind. After the débâcle at Jitra the British forces had withdrawn behind the Perak River. But there was a snag about the Perak River, for it flowed in the wrong direction from north to south in the direction of the Japanese advance rather than from east to west, across it. Unfortunately for Percival, however, a position any farther north would have been made untenable by that same Japanese unit which had landed at Patani and, by snatching the Ledge, had earlier threatened the communications of the doomed position of Jitra. This force, by continuing to advance parallel to the main Japanese thrust, which was coming down the trunk road, had maintained its threat of turning the right flank of any new defensive line. As the Japanese Army advanced, therefore, so did this menacing shadow beside it.

But why had this second force been allowed to shadow the main force along the trunk road? The reason was that the British commanders had considered that the terrain did not permit such a manoeuvre, omitting from their calculations a certain unmetalled road which they thought unsuitable for mechanized transport (and so it was, though by no means impassable for infantry advancing on foot or on bicycles). This road headed straight in the direction the Japanese wanted to go, towards Kuala Kangsar. The fact was that from the very beginning of the Campaign this force from Patani had supplied the loose thread which was causing the British defences to unravel right down the peninsula.

At last, however, at Kuala Kangsar this particular loose thread came to an end and the British right flank was secured by the solid stitching of Malaya’s mountainous spine. But even now, with the mountains at his elbow, Percival felt another retreat was necessary because, alas, the Japanese could use the Perak River to penetrate any defences established north of Telok Anson. And so, in due course and after a further withdrawal, new defensive positions had been prepared in the region of the border between Perak and Selangor on the Slim River, and also to the north and south of it.

It sometimes happens in a dream that you find, as if by coincidence, that all the fears you have when awake are improbably realized one after another. This dismaying sensation of events having tumbled together not really by accident but in a way specially designed to deprive you of all hope, which normally only takes advantage of a dreamer’s gullibility, for the British commanders had moved out of a nightmare into reality: having at long last escaped from what had been threatening them hitherto, they now found with relentless dream-logic that this apparently secure position on the Slim River was threatened from a completely different direction.

That very circumstance which the Major had feared in the first week of the campaign on hearing that the Prince of Wales and the Repulse had been sunk had materialized. Thanks to their virtually complete control of both sea and air the Japanese were now in a position to land as they pleased on the thinly defended west coast (on the east coast, too, come to that). To make matters worse this fragile military situation had to be contained in some way by the men of the exhausted 11th Division although, as it happened, Percival had at his disposal the fresh troops of the 9th Division on the other side of the mountains on the east coast: their job was the defence of the airfield at Kuantan and the denial of Mersing against possible landings, both tasks rendered pointless in the event by the collapse in the west. It was this same unfortunate 11th Division which had been obliged to wait in the rain at the very start of the campaign three weeks earlier while Brooke-Popham pondered his pre-emptive advance into Siam. Those fresh and confident troops waiting for the signal to advance and give the Japanese a thrashing would have been hard to recognize in the somnambulant men wearily digging themselves in and putting up anti-tank obstacles at the Slim River; even Mrs Blackett’s brother, Charlie, though his stay in Singapore had spared him the first part of the retreat, was looking decidedly the worse for wear as he worked with a company of Punjabis at wiring the road.

Yet if these fighting men were weary, so was General Percival, and he was worried, too. Does it strike you as odd that whatever iniative was planned by Malaya Command invariably turned out to contain a flaw which would cause it to fail? It was beginning to strike Percival as very odd indeed. At times he could see the flaw well in advance but even so … it always happened that he could do nothing about it. He could not find fault with General Heath, though it was true that Heath was ‘Indian Army’ and hence, in Percival’s view, not a great deal could be expected of him. As a matter of fact, it could even be argued that Heath was being miraculously successful in preserving his retreating 111 Indian Corps from being destroyed And so, who was to blame? He could not, in all fairness, blame himself or his staff for the flaw that kept appearing. Very often it was simply the lie of land that caused his plans to go adrift … or perhaps it was the result of that earlier bungling by poor old Brookers. Whatever the reason, the flaw kept on appearing. It was most peculiar. Or worse than peculiar.

On the night of 4 January, worn out by the constant strain and worried by the prospect of an important conference with General Heath and General Gordon Bennett at Segamat on the following day, Percival fell into a deep sleep. Almost immediately, it seemed, he plunged into a confusing dream about some interminable dinner-party at Government House. But it was not now that it was taking place, in the New Year of 1942, for there, opposite, was the decent, blunt, straightforward countenance of old General Dobbie, the GOC. So it must then be 1937 when he had been out here as GSO1 on Dobbie’s staff. At the end of the table he could see the Governor’s handsome, slightly supercilious face: behind the Governor again there was someone standing in the shadows speaking into his ear. Percival knew there was someone there because whoever it was had rested his hand on the back of the Governor’s chair in a familiar sort of way while he was whispering. He could just make out that the hand emerged from the sleeve of a uniform, but belonging to which of the Services he could not say.

Suddenly, and with spirit, he challenged this man in the shadows. After a moment the hand on the Governor’s chair was withdrawn. A period of confusion and darkness followed, of which he could make no sense. Presently he sat up, sweating and suffocating inside the mosquito net. The image of the Governor, gazing at him with a condescending smile, slowly faded. It was still dark.

Percival looked at his watch, took a swallow of water from the glass beside his bed and lay back again. It was very hot. The fan slogging away above him could make little impression on the air inside his mosquito net. He would have liked to tear away the net and sleep in fresh air again, but he could not possibly risk an insect bite that might lead to malaria or dengue fever, not at this stage. ‘I’ll never sleep like this, though,’ he told himself. Yet, despite the heat, he fell asleep again almost immediately and this time he dreamed that he was back at Staff College and he was doing some exam or other on which his whole career in the Army would depend. Wait, he had remembered now what it was. He had to prevent the Japanese from seizing the Naval Base on Singapore Island and they had already got almost as far as Kuala Lumpur. He was no longer at Staff College. He was in Malaya and it was the real thing. He began to sweat and worry again in his sleep.

But towards dawn Percival received a welcome visit. The shades of Clausewitz and Metternich came to his bedside to offer their advice. Presently they were joined by the spirits of Liddell Hart and of Sir Edward Hamley, author of Hamley’s The Operations of War, Explained and Illustrated. These gentlemen considered a number of solutions to the difficulties which faced him. Metternich recommended that everything should be wagered on a rapid strike north to disrupt the Japanese lines of communication, Hamley spoke vaguely of flanking movements (and also, less pertinently, of cavalry), Clausewitz wanted Percival to withdraw his troops intact to Singapore Island to conserve them until reinforcements could arrive from Europe and America. Ah, that was interesting! Percival listened eagerly to these ghostly advisers and found each more persuasive than the last. But presently their voices grew fainter and they fell to arguing among themselves. All too soon came the tread of the orderly’s heavy boots in the corridor outside.

Conscious again, Percival decided, at his meeting in Segamat with General Heath and General Gordon Bennett, that although in most respects the narrowness of the Slim River position lent itself well to defence, the threat of amphibious landings further down the coast would make it untenable in the long run unless reinforcements could be brought up to cover the coastal area. The Slim River defile, however, provided the last chance of stopping the enemy short of Kuala Lumpur … or indeed, south of it for a considerable distance. For as you went south the knobbly spine of mountains sank back beneath the peninsula’s fair skin, which itself became pleasantly wrinkled with roads. There would be little chance in such favourable terrain of stopping the Japanese in Malacca. And so, if not in Malacca, it would have to be in Johore … if not on Singapore Island itself. In the meantime, the Japanese must be denied the airfield at Kuantan on the east coast, at least until the reinforcements of troops and planes expected in mid-January had arrived. Moreover, if the defence of Johore was to be properly organized, the Japanese must be halted for a time and the capture of Kuala Lumpur postponed. Everything pointed therefore to the critical defensive stand being made at the Slim River. The Japanese must be stopped there or the defence of Johore would be hopeless. That was why the Punjabis and the Argylls had to keep on digging themselves in even after dark on the following nights. Everything would depend on them.

45

As the late afternoon shadows were beginning to lengthen over the Mayfair’s increasingly neglected and overgrown compound, two figures could be seen making their way along the well-trodden path towards the Blacketts’ house: one of these was easily recognizable as Matthew, normally dressed, looking somewhat pensive, but who was the other, this individual wearing what looked like a scarlet boiler-suit, a scarlet balaclava helmet from which horns protruded, and carrying a large toasting-fork? This, as it happened, was only the Major who with great reluctance had put on the suit which he had been sent by Blackett and Webb Limited for the dress rehearsal of their jubilee parade. He was now regretting the decision because he felt much too hot: you cannot expect to wear a balaclava helmet and horns in the tropics without discomfort. Besides, he was afraid that he might be the only person who had decided to dress up, and he now regretted having yielded to Walter’s insistence that he should personify Inflation. The Major swiped irritably with his toasting-fork at one of the giant thistles growing beside the tennis court and the air filled with drifting white down.

The Major, however, had a reason for wanting to keep in with Walter. Several of Blackett and Webb’s vans had been set aside for conversion into floats for the jubilee parade and the Major, to whom it had been perfectly clear for some time that the parade would never take place, was anxious that his AFS unit should be able to call on them in an emergency to supplement what scanty transport was available: this amounted to the Lagonda, Mr Wu’s Buick, a motor-cycle belonging to the estate manager and a couple of bicycles.

A site for the building of the floats had been chosen adjacent to the Blacketts’ compound in a yard surrounded by a cluster of dilapidated godowns which at some time in the last century had been used as storage sheds for a nutmeg plantation but for the past many years had been disused, at least, until recently when Walter’s excessive buying of rubber to circumvent the new American regulations had filled all Blackett and Webb’s other godowns to overflowing and obliged these tumbledown buildings, hastily restored, to accommodate some of the surplus. Walter had originally bought the former nutmeg plantation, which still boasted pleasant groves of lofty, evergreen nutmeg trees, in order to cushion his own property from its acquisition by disagreeable neighbours. But now it seemed to him that he could hardly have made a better investment. Where better could he have found to prepare in secret the floats for Blackett and Webb’s triumphant parade?

The Major had been waiting patiently over the past three weeks for the reality of Singapore’s increasingly precarious situation to put paid to Walter’s jubilee parade. At least, he had assumed, work on building the floats would have been abandoned. With a continuing shortage of labour at the docks and with the Forces trying desperately to recruit men to build defences and accommodation that should have been built years ago it was inconceivable that labour should be diverted to something as trivial as Walter’s floats. Yet although the building of them had been considerably delayed he was astonished to find now that work was still continuing; moreover, twice as many men were working on them as before. The explanation was simple: the men in question, Asiatics normally employed as carpenters, painters or welders at the docks, very naturally preferred the comparative safety of this nutmeg grove to working on coastal defences, at the docks, or the Naval Base under the threat of air-raids.

In other respects, however, there were definite signs that reality was making substantial inroads into Walter’s dream. The only Europeans who had decided to attend this dress rehearsal were Monty, even more bizarrely dressed than the Major, and a few of the younger executives of Blackett and Webb who had presumably found it impossible to refuse; none of the latter had seen fit to dress up for the occasion. Less than half of the Chinese who had been summoned to animate the dragons had turned up. Not more than three-quarters of a Chinese brass band was perched on some rusting machinery at one end of the yard, occasionally banging or blowing at their instruments but for the most part watching dubiously as Walter, looking impatient and out of sorts, shouted at his helpers and tried to marshal enough volunteers to get one of the dragons moving. As he saw Matthew and the Major arrive he broke off, however, and came over to them.

‘It’s good of you to come,’ he said. ‘I appreciate it. Most people haven’t, though, and I doubt whether we’re going to be able to do very much with what we have …’ He paused gesturing vigorously. ‘Not there, you ass! Over there with the others! How many times do I have to tell you?’ He sighed with exasperation, stuck his hands in his pockets and surveyed the chaotic scene spread before him. He was perspiring freely, and looked squat, formidable and slightly demented. ‘It’s no use,’ he muttered, more to himself than to the Major and Matthew, ‘what can you do with such people?’

The Major cautiously lifted a finger to scratch one of his horns which was itching. He was a little surprised to find that he felt sorry for Walter. He said nothing, however. Together they set off to inspect the floats, Walter explaining that he had hoped to get the whole parade together and into motion and to take a couple of turns around the swimming pool and back here again to iron out any last minute difficulties. That was now out of the question unless the absentees presented themselves double quick. They passed two floats parked in the shade of a nutmeg tree: on one of them Joan sat, wearing a plumed Roman helmet and a flowing white garment of Grecian appearance which displayed her lovely arms and shoulders to advantage; in her left hand she held a trident, her right hand secured the Britannic shield. She was gazing impassively ahead and when Matthew murmured ‘Hello’ made no reply (perhaps she had not heard him). Kate sat on the other float with her arm around a gigantic cornucopia: she brightened up when she saw Matthew and waved her free hand.

Kate’s cornucopia had a few minutes earlier been the cause of a furious row between Walter and Monty. From out of its gaping mouth there spilled an abundance of everything made of rubber: motor-tyres of all shapes and sizes, bicycle tyres, inner tubes, shoes and wellingtons, rubber gloves, sou’westers, batting gloves, rubber sheets and tiles, shock absorbers, rubber-tipped pencils, cushions, kneeling pads, balloons, elastic bands, belts, braces and a hundred and one other things, not all of them recognizable. To this magnificent array Monty, as a joke, had attempted to add a packet of contraceptives. As ill luck would have it, Walter had noticed his son chuckling gleefully as he arranged something conspicuously on the very lip of the cornucopia. His display of anger, even to Monty who was accustomed to it, had been frightening. Walter was incensed, not simply that Monty should have done something that might have made the cornucopia look ridiculous, but that he should have paid so little heed to the modesty of his younger sister. Monty had retired, disgraced, and was at present slouching glumly in the shade of another tree.

‘Why don’t you get off your behind and do something to help,’ Walter shouted at him roughly as he passed. Monty stirred uncomfortably but evidently could think of no way in which he could improve on what was being done already, for presently he sank back again. Monty, the Major noticed, like himself had been allotted a rôle in the counter-parade which was to accompany the paradé proper, harassing it symbolically to represent the pitfalls that a thriving business might have to face in its passage over the years; as a matter of fact, the Major was quite looking forward to tormenting plump and cheerful little Kate with his toasting-fork, though he could see no real reason why inflation should carry a toasting-fork at all. Monty’s costume came no closer than the Major’s to suggesting the part that he was to portray: it consisted of an old striped swimming-costume with shoulder straps, striped football socks rolled right up his hairy thighs and a fanged mask which bore a disturbing coincidental resemblance to General Percival: at the moment this mask and an inflated bladder tied to a stick lay on the ground beside him; the final and most frightening touch in Monty’s costume were the awe-inspiring, curved talons which had been grafted on to a pair of batting-gloves for the occasion. Walter had alloted Monty the rôle of Crippling Overheads in the parade and had refused all his requests for a more heroic part.

The Major was now gazing with misgiving at one or two of the other floats which Walter, his spirits reviving a little, was showing him (Matthew had sloped off for a chat with Kate and perhaps was even hoping to make it up with Joan). Despite all the difficulties and postponements, Walter was saying, certain advances had been made in Blackett and Webb’s preparations: it would be a great shame, and the most bitter of disappointments to him personally, if the jubilee should ‘for one reason or another’ now fail to take place. These advances, the Major had to agree, were considerable: four of the vans which had been set aside for the jubilee had already been crowned with the harnesses of wooden spars and metal brackets on which would be placed, when the time came, the floats which the committee had decided upon; other harnesses and floats were still under construction here and there, and in due course other vans would be temporarily commandeered to support them. Here was the towering dome-shaped head of the octopus which, instead of the more usual lion, had been selected to symbolize Singapore herself: this octopus, smiling genially, had been fitted out with amazingly lifelike rubber tentacles specially made for the occasion in Blackett and Webb’s local workshops with the participation of local craftsmen ‘of all races’ (as Walter explained). The advantage of rubber for this purpose, he went on, was that it was flexible and the ends of tentacles which were twisted normally into rings could be pulled open to allow someone to be ‘captured’ in a friendly grip: in this way young women with banners proclaiming them to be Shanghai, Hong Kong, Batavia, Saigon and so forth could walk along beside the float and appear to writhe in the tentacles, which would fit round their necks, in ‘a very naturalistic manner’. An elegant solution to the problem, as the Major must agree.

Next to the octopus came another float with eight more arms, this time human. These arms, immensely long, stretched forward over the cab of the van which was to carry them, and had been painted variously dark brown, light brown, yellow and white to represent the four races of Malaya stretching out side by side to reach for prosperity above massive signboards reading, in Tamil, Malay, Chinese and English: ALL IN IT TOGETHER.

‘Wouldn’t it be better if it read simply “All together” or “All working together”?’ suggested the Major. ‘It seems to me that there’s something a bit odd about “all in it together”.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so, no,’ replied Walter vaguely. ‘It seems all right to me … Not inside the bloody van, you idiot, on top of it!’ he added in an indignant howl at an impassive Chinese carpenter who was trying to drag a large sign bearing the words ‘Continuity in Prosperity’ into the driving seat of one of the vans.

‘Still no sign of the rest of the so-and-sos who said they’d come!’ Walter inspected his watch, looking defenceless all of a sudden. ‘Well, come on, we’ll give them another few minutes and then if they haven’t turned up we’ll call it a day.’

They walked on. A pink-faced youth, one of Blackett and Webb’s younger executives, hurried up with some problem for Walter. After a hasty conference Walter said: ‘if you don’t mind, Major, this young man will show you the rest. I’ll be with you again in a few minutes.’ He strode away, summoning an Indian secretary with a clipboard to accompany him. Once he was out of sight the prospective participants in the parade relaxed visibly.

The Major, with the pink-faced young man at his side, now found himself standing in front of Prosperity herself, depicted by sandwich boards as long as the van which was to carry them and twice as high. These boards had been skillfully painted to imitate Straits dollar bills, enormously magnified: on one side the blue one-dollar, on the other the red ten-dollar, and both with the oval portrait of the King which you would find on the currency itself, beautifully painted to show every detail of his wavy hair and high ceremonial collar, though perhaps with eyes more slanted than usual, for this, too, was the work of a Chinese artist. ‘Blackett and Webb 1892-1942. Fifty Years of Prosperity for Workers of All Races.’

‘I hope you approve, Major Archer,’ said the young man politely. ‘We in the Firm happen to think it’s a rather valuable contribution.’

‘I must say,’ said the Major dubiously, ‘that I wonder whether this is quite the moment to go in for all this sort of thing.

But no! didn’t the Major see that it was precisely now that such a jubilee parade was needed, now more than at any other moment in the history of the Colony?

They had moved on to yet another float in the form of a crown composed of vertical wooden laths painted silver to simulate metal and tipped with arrowheads. This float, which was entitled ‘The Blackett and Webb Group of Companies’, also carried the slogans ‘Continuity in Prosperity’ and ‘All in it Together’. The Major paused, fascinated, for behind the bars of the crown, as if in a cage, were a number of rather sulky-looking young women with marcelled hair and bright red lipstick wearing glittering silver lamé dresses. Each of these women was evidently intended to represent one of Blackett and Webb’s interests for although their dresses were identical they wore a variety of silk sashes proclaiming ‘Shipping’, ‘Insurance’, ‘Import-Export’, ‘Rubber’, ‘Engineering’, ‘Pineapple Canning’, ‘Entrepôt’ and a great many more. The Major, eyeing this float, was recalling uneasily his conversation with Matthew about how Blackett and Webb controlled the rubber companies under its management by means of incestuous investment, when the young women on the float spotted his companion; they appeared to recognize him for they crowded to the bars of the crown and began to shout abuse, including certain expressions which the Major was surprised to hear coming from such attractive young ladies. ‘When you give us bloody-damn money?’ they shrieked at him, among other things. ‘We waiting here all bloody-damn afternoon!’

The young executive, however, blushing furiously, averted his gaze and hurried the Major along, explaining in an undertone that these young women had possibly been ‘a bit of a mistake’: they were a singing group called the Da Sousa Sisters temporarily stranded in Singapore for want of nightclub engagements. Although the terms of their employment in Blackett and Webb’s jubilee parade had been carefully explained to them in advance, it had turned out that they had expected a certain amount of special treatment as ‘professional artistes’. However, he went on, panting slightly, what he had been about to say was that the important thing was continuity in the Colony’s prosperity. All races must realize that there was no earthly use in a long period of poverty followed by a quick and unreliable fortune, like a big win at roulette. That sort of thing got a country nowhere! What you wanted was a slow and steady enrichment over the years … the very thing, as it happened, that firms like Blackett and Webb had been supplying for the past fifty years or more. While he was enlarging excitedly on this aspect of prosperity, using expressions like ‘infrastructure’ and ‘economic spread’ which, however, only served to numb the Major’s brain, an air-raid siren sounded. Some moments of chaos followed. Men dashed here and there. Steel helmets were clapped on. Some people peered apprehensively at the sky, others dived for shelter. The Da Sousa Sisters set up a terrible shrieking to be let out of the crown in which they were imprisoned. ‘I suppose we’ll have to let them out,’ muttered the young executive, ‘but I don’t know how we’ll ever get them back.’ But already Monty was unfastening the door of their cage in an effort to ingratiate himself, though not before ‘Import-Export’ had taken off one of her shoes to join ‘Wireless and Electrical’ in hammering on the bars. The Major’s companion dragged him hurriedly towards a makeshift shelter, more, it seemed, for protection from the Da Sousa Sisters who were now running loose than from possible bombs.

In due course the Major found himself crouching down in a sort of igloo made of rubber bales which was the nearest approach that could be devised to an air-raid shelter; while he crouched there democratically with ‘workers of all races’ he noticed that his companion had clapped on a steel helmet. The Major regretted that he had not brought his own helmet: clearly it could not have been expected to fit over his horns. Never mind, it was too late to do anything about it now! Nevertheless, while the young executive began to explain that by ‘infrastructure’ he meant such things as roads, railways and other services which, though they do not produce wealth themselves, are crucial to its production in the long run, not least by enticing investment from overseas, the Major continued to finger his horns uncertainly, wishing that he had not been such a bally fool. He had not brought his gas-mask either.

But, the young man went on, you could not build roads and railways on a ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ basis … for such investments you need a steady volume of trade over a number of years! That was the substance of the magic phrase ‘continuity in prosperity’ which, as the Major had no doubt noticed, was painted everywhere in Chinese as well as English characters.

Would it not have been better, though, replied the Major, if both vans and workers of all races had been employed on the more urgent tasks of, say, preventing Singapore from burning to the ground, repairing the bomb damage or unloading the ships which lay in the docks with cargoes of urgently needed ammunition and supplies?

After all, it was absurd that soldiers who were needed to man the defences should have to unload these ships because the labour force had decamped to build Blackett and Webb’s floats. But even as the Major spoke there came the crump of exploding bombs from the direction of Keppel Harbour and he was obliged to admit that the labour force, ill-paid as it was, and without adequate air-raid shelters, would most likely have decamped anyway, and one could hardly blame them. At length, the ‘all clear’ sounded and the Major crawled stiffly out of the rubber igloo and got to his feet. It was time he was getting back to the Mayfair in case his services should be needed.

But there was still something that the young man from Blackett and Webb wanted to show him before he went and the Major, protesting weakly, allowed himself to be diverted towards one or two floats which had been designed to portray the social benefits which had attended these fifty years of successful commerce. Here was a papier mâché teacher beside a gigantic blackboard on which was written in the usual languages ‘All in it together’ and these small grey lumps which had still to be painted severally in dark brown, light brown, yellow and …

‘Yes, of course, “children of all races”,’ said the Major who was getting the hang of it by now.

‘And this figure on a horse which is meant to be a sort of Chinese Saint George is using his lance to kill … no, not a dragon, the Chinese are rather fond of dragons … but a hookworm, very much magnified, of course. But now, and this is what I really wanted you to see, we come to the most ambitious float of all from a technical point of view … though it doesn’t look much, I agree, until you see it working. Yes, it represents a symbolical rubber tree … It had to be symbolical because real rubber trees look so uninteresting … producing wealth for all races. If you look closely, Major, you’ll see that a hole representing the cut made by the tapper’s knife has been made in the bark. Now when I pull this switch here liquid gold pours out into this basin …’

‘Liquid gold?’

‘Well, actually, its just coloured water … now what’s the matter. Oh, I see, the pump’s not plugged in. Here we go!’ He pulled the switch and the tree began to spurt noisily into the basin.

‘It looks as if it’s … well …’ said the Major.

‘Yes, I’m afraid it does rather. But it was the best we could do. At first we tried a little conveyor belt inside the trunk which kept spilling coins through the opening in the bark and that looked fine, but the blighters kept pinching the coins. Still, it wasn’t a bad idea.’ He sighed and looked momentarily discouraged. ‘Anyway, don’t you agree that once we get this jubilee parade on the road it should make it clear to everyone what they will have to lose by exchanging us for the Japanese?’

46

There was an area of unusually dense jungle in that part of the Slim River region where General Percival had decided that a stand must be made if southern Malaya were to be given the time to prepare its defences: it lay a little to the north of the village and rubber plantation at Trolak where, incidently, one branch of the river flowed under a bridge. To cross this stretch of dense jungle both the trunk road and the railway were obliged to squeeze together and run side by side through a narrow defile which resembled the unusually long neck of a bottle. If the Japanese tanks were to continue their southward advance they would have no alternative but to come through this narrow defile. But just beyond its long neck the bottle opened out into the wider chamber (more like a decanter than a bottle) of the Klapa Bali rubber estate and of Trolak village. If the Japanese tanks once managed to pass through that long neck and get loose among the rubber trees, well … then there would be no stopping them. The only chance then, perhaps, might be to delay them by demolishing the bridge at Trolak and the Slim River Bridge some five miles down the road. And so, demolition charges had been set against these bridges, just in case.

The Brigadier in command of the 12th Brigade, which had been given the task of defending the defile, had established his Brigade HQ some distance into the Klapa Bali estate on the western side of the road. In the rubber on the other side of the road was the 2nd Battalion of his own regiment, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, known since Balaclava as ‘The Thin Red Line’; the presence of the Argylls was naturally a source of comfort to the Brigadier for unlike many of the other troops at his disposal, who were ill-trained and inexperienced, they had proved an effective fighting force against the Japanese, thanks largely to his own efforts in training them for jungle warfare before the campaign began. The Brigadier was a tall man with a long, lean, intelligent face which wore, as a rule, a somewhat grim and determined expression. A luxuriant moustache flourished on his upper lip, as surprising on those craggy features as a clump of wild flowers lodged on a rock face. His arms were thin, his body was thin, his knees under his shorts were thin, all of him was thin. It was surprising then that, despite this lack of manifest strength, he should radiate such purpose and such confidence. Even now, exhausted though he was by three weeks of retreating, digging in, fighting, and again retreating, invariably under appalling conditions, his confidence appeared undiminished.

Nevertheless, as darkness now began to fall on 6 January and he awaited developments, the Brigadier was seriously concerned. Because of the eerie quietness which had prevailed all day he had dared to hope that the Japanese might have been halted by the severe blow they had received in an ambush sprung by the Argylls on the railway the previous day. General Paris, on the other hand, whom he had contacted by telephone, had gloomily postulated a wide flanking movement through the dense jungle which would suddenly develop into an attack in the rear. It had happened before.

The Brigadier had pondered the problems of fighting in the jungle and had noticed that instead of a wary advance on a broad front the Japanese preferred a swift and violent attack down the narrow corridor of the road itself to a considerable depth. For whoever had control of the road, as the Brigadier had already realized, in a situation where maps and wireless were scarce, had control of the only practical means of communication. In dense jungle or in a trackless ocean of identical rubber trees it was hard, or impossible, to calculate your exact position; without an accurate idea of where you were it was out of the question to organize an effective manoeuvre. If you had the road, on the other hand, you had everything.

The Brigadier, therefore, was expecting the Japanese to attack straight down the road: given the position they could, in any case, do little else; only if this assault were stopped could they be expected to leave the road and attempt to encircle its defenders. He had, therefore, disposed his 12th Brigade in depth along the road and railway where they ran together for some distance, with two battalions in the defile: one, the Hyderabads, in a forward position to take the first assault and then fall back; the other, the Punjabis, to deal with the main attack. He was counting on the Japanese being stopped at this point and finding themselves committed to encircling through the jungle. To deal with this eventuality, at the southern end of the defile four companies of the Argylls were positioned on either side of the road to meet flanking attacks at the point where the Japanese would emerge from the jungle into the rubber.

But what made the Brigadier’s long face look even sterner than usual as he awaited developments was the knowledge of the weakened state the brigade was in. Even his own Argylls were reaching the end of their physical resources: what they needed, and the Indian battalions even more so, was just a little time to recover … even a few hours would make a difference. But throughout the campaign the Japanese had, time and again, followed up their attacks more quickly than expected. The Brigadier was hardly surprised in consequence when Captain Sinclair presently informed him that Chinese refugees filtering through the British positions ahead of the advancing Japanese had brought news of a large column of tanks they had seen moving up the trunk road.

‘They say their engineers have been suh … suh … suh … warming like ants at every demolished bridge for miles back, sir,’ stammered Sinclair excitedly. He was surprised and deeply impressed that the Brigadier should remain his imperturbable self at this news of approaching tanks. He knew, and the Brigadier knew, just how much could be hoped for from the anti-tank defences in the defile … In the four days that had elapsed since the decision had been taken to make a stand here, work on the defences had continued whenever the constant Japanese air-raids permitted. Weapons pits had been dug and wire had been strung by Chinese and Indian coolies supervised by engineers sent forward by 11th Division; no sooner had the troops themselves arrived, tired though they were by this latest withdrawal, than they, too, had been obliged to join in the work on the defences. But the only defences that could be found that might, at a pinch, stop tanks were a few concrete blocks and a couple of dozen anti-tank mines, both of which had been disposed in the defile. All well and good. Sinclair knew, however (he was a much keener soldier than he had been a diplomat), that tanks are distinctly solid objects: the only point in stopping them with your concrete blocks, which you won’t do for long, in any case, with these improvised methods, is to allow your anti-tank guns to get in a good shot at them while motionless. Unfortunately, the slender obstacles which the 12th Brigade had been able to erect in the defile were covered by a mere three anti-tank guns manned, into the bargain, by gunners who had, alas, never been trained to cope with tanks at all, even in daylight, let alone tanks most likely firing tracer at close range in pitch darkness. That should be enough to make even a seasoned gunner’s hair stand on end, never mind a raw Indian recruit.

Well then, what else was there to stop the Japs? A railway bridge, forward, had been blown up (the Japanese had tanks with wheels that would run on the rails, it was thought). The Argylls, in common with the rest of the British forces in Malaya, had no tanks of their own, only armoured cars and bren-gun carriers; although these might come in handy on the estate roads to cope with a flanking movement by the Jap infantry into the rubber they were quite useless, of course, against tanks. Most serious of all, the British anti-tank rifles would not penetrate the armour of the Japanese medium tanks. And so what could be done? If the tanks once got through the defile there was only the bridge at Trolak and the Slim River Bridge, both prepared for demolition, which lay between the tanks and the open road to Singapore. And now, into the bargain, it seemed that the Japanese attack would come twenty-four hours sooner than expected.

If the Brigadier received this news of an impending attack from young Sinclair without making a fuss, it was partly because it was his business to be imperturbable, partly because he knew that one can never predict quite how things will turn out: battles cannot be decided on paper by subtracting the armour of one side from the armour of the other and giving the victory to the side which has the surplus. There was a probability, certainly, that the tanks would have the advantage … but so much depends on the quality of the men and on what is going on in their minds. True, the Indian battalions were in very poor shape and the Argylls were not much better. But a quick success or two and who could tell? Thank heaven, anyway, for the few dozen reinforcements who had just arrived from Singapore on this dark, rain-lashed night, under Captain Hamish Ross, for they included some of the best men in the battalion. The few words he had had with Ross had cheered him.

‘We had a wee spot o’ bother, sir, at Tyersall Park,’ Ross had said, eyeing the Brigadier slyly. ‘I suppose ye might call it a mutiny.’

‘A mutiny, man? Ye’ll no expect me to believe that, Hamish Ross!’

And so Captain Ross had explained. When his party of reinforcements had paraded at the Tyersall camp in Singapore a number of Argylls on staff duty whom Malaya Command had specifically ordered him to leave behind had paraded too, demanding to return to the regiment to join in the scrap.

‘Aye, now that’s more like it,’ nodded the Brigadier and, though his expression was no less forbidding, Hamish Ross could tell by the glint in his eye that he was pleased. These new arrivals would help put heart into the other men, given enough time for them to settle in.

Outside, the rain had slackened now. Making his way through the rubber trees back to the road to find out whether anything more had been gleaned from Chinese refugees, Sinclair paused, gripped by the sense of unreality which comes from excitement and lack of sleep. In the course of the afternoon he had gone forward with the Brigadier to inspect the progress that the Hyderabads and the Punjabis were making with their defences and there he had met Charlie Tyrrell, Mrs Blackett’s brother. He did not know Charlie very well. In Singapore they had not met more than once or twice at the Blacketts’ house and even then had scarcely exchanged more than a few words. But seeing each other now in these unusual, even desperate circumstances, they had immediately begun to talk as if they were old friends. Charlie had come back with him for an hour to the Argylls’ area in the rubber.

Sinclair had been shocked to see the state that Charlie was in. His handsome face was hollow-cheeked with fatigue, dirty and inflamed with insect bites; even his khaki was in tatters. But it was not so much Charlie’s physical appearance that had given Sinclair a shock, for in the middle of a jungle campaign one does not expect to see a soldier looking as if he has just turned out on parade: it was the feverish look in his eyes and the obsessive, fatalistic way in which he talked … almost as if he were talking to himself, as if Sinclair had not been there at all. Charlie talked incessantly about his men: he had never seen them so apathetic and dejected! They were at the end of their tether, that much was clear! ‘How can you blame them?’ he had demanded without waiting for a reply. ‘Most of them are barely trained recruits.’

Sinclair had nodded sympathetically. Unlike the Argylls down the road the Punjabis did not possess that extra strength for living and fighting in the jungle which comes from training in atrocious conditions, from discipline, from regimental traditions which, combining all together, temper each individual and form what Sinclair thought of as a collective willpower, imperious and inflexible (yet even some of his own Argylls were close to cracking).

He had watched his men for the past two days, Charlie went on, and it was clear that their only thought (though these were the bravest of men!) was to huddle in their slit trenches, the nearest approach to security they could find. But who could blame them? In the course of their long retreat through northern and central Malaya the battalion had lost two hundred and fifty men, of whom many had been killed. From dawn the day before yesterday, there had been a steady stream of Jap bombers and fighters blasting away at the edges of the jungle on both sides of the defile where, though hidden, they knew the British forces to be. These planes had robbed the Punjabis of any chance they might have had of resting before the next attack; they had also caused a further trickle of casualties. And yet, somehow, even that was not the worst of it … It was …

They were standing a little way off the road in the shade. Charlie was leaning his back against the trunk of a rubber tree. As he spoke he kept wearily slapping his sweating face with his hand as if to drive off insects but mechanically, with resignation (besides, Sinclair could see no insects around Charlie’s face) … Abruptly Sinclair was afraid that the Brigadier might come by and see Charlie in this state. He felt that that could not be allowed to happen, he could not quite say why, except that you only had to glance at the way Charlie was leaning against the rubber tree, talking and slapping himself, his gaunt and desperate face dappled by sunlight and shadow filtering through the leaves, to know that he had very nearly reached the point where he simply would not care any longer!

But still Charlie was trying to explain himself to Sinclair, with an almost pathetic determination that he should understand … He was trying to say that, however bad it might be when the Jap Zero was roaring along the road machine-gunning the fringes of the jungle, it was no better when the plane had dipped its wing and swung away over the tree tops. Because within a few seconds an eerie silence had fallen, blanketing even the sound of the departing plane. ‘When you’ve been in this bloody place a bit longer, Sinclair,’ he said, grinning now as if there was something amusing about what he was saying, but at the same time scratching his ribs viciously through his tattered shirt, ‘you’ll understand exactly what I mean.’

‘Well, I’ve been trying to get up here for the past three weeks,’ said Sinclair defensively, for it was true that it was only four days since he had left Singapore, ‘but I think I know what you mean.’

There was something about this silence, went on Charlie, ignoring him: it gave the sound of your voice a distant, unreal quality. Even quite sharp sounds, like the dropping of a mess tin on the metalled road, would be blotted up immediately by the dense green walls on either side. The sound did not seem to go anywhere, that was it. There was no resonance. It gave you a baffling sensation, like speaking into a dead telephone. Only at night did you begin to hear sounds again. But so disturbing were the night sounds that the silence was almost better. Another thing, action here seemed to have no more resonance than sounds. During the daytime when you stopped moving, everything stopped, as if you were on the floor of a dead ocean. Everything had to come from you, that was what was so intolerable. His men felt the same way, he could tell by watching them. For men already exhausted this need to initiate all movement from their own resources was unendurable.

The two men were silent for a few moments. Charlie had evidently come to the end of what he had wanted to say. Although he still leaned dejectedly against the tree, he had stopped slapping himself and appeared calmer. ‘Sorry to go on like that about it,’ he said presently. ‘It’s the same for everyone, of course. Besides, it’s not much better for you blokes here in the rubber.’ It was true, Sinclair reflected, that even at the best of times there was something unnerving about a rubber plantation; wherever you stood you found yourself at the centre of a bewildering maze of identical trees which stretched out geometrically in every direction as far as the eye could see. But in Malaya the eye, as a rule, could not see very far; you seldom found a place from where you could get a prospect over the jungle or rubber which covered the country like a green lid on a saucepan.

‘D’you know Rilke’s poem about the panther?’ asked Charlie suddenly, smiling.

Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehen der Stäbe
So müd geworden … dass er nichts mehr hält …

‘Roughly translated it means: “His gaze from looking through the bars has grown so tired he can’t take in anything more.”

Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe
Und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt.

“It seems to him as if there are a thousand bars and behind the thousand bars, no world.” That’s what I feel about all these bloody rubber trees.’

Sinclair thought of this again as, now in darkness, he strode on through the dripping ranks of trees, trying to shake off the premonition that if the Japanese attacked tonight it would be the end of the line for the Punjabis, no matter how strong the position they occupied in the defile.

As the night advanced the rain stopped and the moon began to appear, fitfully at first and then more frequently, between the clouds. From the jungle a dreadful odour of rotting vegetation crept out over the waiting Punjabis and hung there in the humid atmosphere. Now, more brilliant than ever, the moon hung like a great white lamp over the two black walls of jungle, shining so brightly that if you moved out of the covering foliage you could see your shadow clearly printed on the surface of the road. Behind them, a little way along the road, the Argylls guarding the exits from the defile into the rubber listened, skin crawling, to the steady churning of the jungle.

Charlie looked at the luminous green face of his wrist watch: it was midnight. From close at hand there came the metallic sound of some insect he had never been able to identify … it resembled the winding-up of a clockwork toy. He was dreamily contemplating this sound and at the same time vowing to keep his eyes open when, like a paralysing blow from the darkness, there came at last the sound for which he had been listening for so long, the first thud of guns from the Hyderabads’ position up the road. The shelling continued. For a while nothing else happened. One, two, three hours passed. He began to nod off again. Suddenly, he woke. The noise of gunfire had ceased. The Japanese were beginning their attack.

47

Not far away from where Charlie waited with the Punjabis, a small, bespectacled figure in battledress sat in the back of a lorry gripping his knees tensely, his rifle locked between them. This was none other than Private Kikuchi and as he sat there in complete darkness he was doing his best to concentrate his thoughts on the heroic example of his uncle, Bugler Kikuchi, who had sounded his bugle with his dying breath. Private Kikuchi knew that in a few minutes, at a sign from his commander, Lieutenant Matsushita, he would have to hurl himself forward with his bayonet at the ready ‘like a blind man unafraid of snakes’, as Matsushita put it. Would he be able to follow Uncle Kikuchi’s immaculate example? Huddled beside him in the lorry as it crept forward without lights he sensed, but could not see, his comrades of the Ando Regiment. Perhaps they too, were wondering what the hours before dawn would bring? Would they even live to see the daylight again? Perhaps they were hoping, if possible, to die gloriously fighting for the Emperor. Certainly, Lieutenant Matsushita would be. He was an officer with strangely burning eyes who had already served in the Imperial Army, mopping up bandits in Manchuria.

Kikuchi was astonished and awed by Lieutenant Matsushita. Every time he met those burning eyes it was as if he received an electric shock. The intensity of feeling in Matsushita, his utter devotion to the Emperor and to his country, had come as a revelation even to Kikuchi who, one might have thought, had little to learn about Japanese National Spirit with such an uncle. Yet there was something that Kikuchi found rather frightening about him at the same time … Sometimes it almost seemed as if he wanted to get not only himself but everyone else killed, too. He would dash forward sometimes with bullets falling about him like a spring shower while he might easily have advanced in relative security by some other route.

To make matters worse (or better, depending how you looked at it) he had taken a particular liking to Kikuchi, either because of his glorious uncle or because he sensed Kikuchi’s fascination with him. On one occasion he had taken Kikuchi aside and shown him some of the medals he had been awarded and which he carried everywhere with him in a little waterproof pouch, even on the most desperate sorties into the jungle. He had allowed Kikuchi to gaze at his Order of the Rising Sun, Fourth Class, at his Decoration of Manchuria, Fourth and Fifth Classes, at his Campaign Medal of the Chinese Incident, at his Campaign Medal of the Manchurian Incident and at several others, including an Order of the Golden Kite, Fifth Class. ‘One day, Kikuchi, you too will have medals like these,’ he had said, his eyes fastened on Kikuchi’s and gripping them tightly as in two glowing chopsticks so that he could not turn away. ‘Or you will be dead,’ he added in a somewhat chilling manner, as an afterthought.

It was not that Kikuchi minded exactly dying for his Emperor if he had to; after all, like his comrades he had left some hair and fingernail clippings behind in Japan for funerary purposes in case the rest of his body did not return. He was not a Kikuchi for nothing! And yet, once or twice, observing Matsushita and his bosom companion, Lieutenant Nakamura, with whom he had graduated from the Military Academy, the thought had crossed Kikuchi’s mind (indeed, it had had to be frogmarched across his mind under heavy guard and swiftly, like a deserter who must not be allowed to contaminate his fellows) that all things in human affairs, even battlefield glory, can be taken a tiny bit too far. Could it be that the High Command thought so, too? Well, no, that was unlikely. Yet despite their heroism neither Matsushita nor Nakamura had as yet risen very far in the Army. They were both still young, of course, but perhaps something else lay behind their lack of promotion … Kikuchi had heard a vague rumour that they might have been involved in an attempt to revive the November Affair at the Military Academy with a new revolt of ultra-patriotic cadets … or perhaps it was that they had led an assault on brother officers they suspected of aping European manners, something of the sort … Never mind, whatever the truth of the matter it was an honour, Kikuchi assured himself, gripping his knees more tightly than ever to take his mind off his churning stomach (perhaps he should have swallowed a couple of Jintan pills?), to serve under such fearless and patriotic officers. Both of them, as it happened, were nearby at this very moment: Matsushita was only a matter of inches away in the swaying darkness: Kikuchi could not see him but he pictured him sitting in his habitual pose, palms of both hands resting on the tasselled hilt of his sabre, his expression merciless.

As for Nakamura, he was leading the medium tanks and so, you might have thought, could not possibly be anywhere near this lorry full of infantry. Nevertheless, Nakamura was only a few yards in front. What had happened was that Matsushita, reckless as ever, had insisted that a platoon of picked infantry, under his personal leadership, should come next to Nakamura’s leading tank in the assault column now moving down the road towards the British positions. He had wasted no time in picking Kikuchi to ride with him in his first lorry sandwiched between the two leading tanks; more troops of the Ando Detachment came in a position of somewhat greater security further down the armoured column. Kikuchi, naturally, was deeply conscious of the honour that had been done him. All the same, the leading vehicles in the column would certainly bear the brunt of the enemy fire. This would be bad enough for the tanks with their armour; what would it be like for a vulnerable lorry-load of infantry? Still, one must act heroically and hope for the best.

The tanks and lorries continued to creep forward head to tail, without lights. It was very quiet, as if all the men in the lorry, were holding their breath; Kikuchi listened to the steady rattling of the tank tracks on the road’s surface but even this sound seemed barely audible, soaked up instantly by the dark mass of jungle on each side. How much longer would this go on for? He was weary and wanted to sleep. He was also hungry. How they had been driven! It seemed to him that this campaign, though it had lasted only three weeks, had been going on for ever. He sometimes found it hard to believe that he had ever known another kind of life … on and on they had trudged, seldom eating anything but dry bread and salt, not even pausing to consume the munificent food supplies left by the British as they retreated.

And what terrible endurance the High Command demanded of them! In Kikuchi’s mind one ordeal had begun to blur and blend into another and only now and then did some particular occasion stand out clearly in his mind: he remembered advancing through the jungle towards the bridge at Kuala Kangsar with nothing to eat but what fruit they could find (yes, he had remembered not to eat beautifully shaped or coloured fruit), and an occasional stew of snake-meat (and yes, he had dutifully eaten the snake’s raw liver according to instructions whenever the opportunity presented itself), prepared from the dismal creatures that squeezed in and out of the undergrowth beneath their feet. He remembered a fierce attack by Scotsmen north of the Perak River; for a while they had been halted there unable to communicate with their headquarters. But then a light aeroplane had appeared over the jungle and had dropped them a communication tube. It was a message from Mr Staff Officer Okada. Matsushita had told Kikuchi what it contained … ‘Esteemed detachment, deep gratitude for several days’ heroic fighting.’ How pleased Matsushita had been for this praise from Mr Staff Officer Okada. He had been even more pleased when he had read on, for the message had ordered a raid on the southern bank of the Perak River. The bridge must be captured before it was demolished by the retreating British. How Matsushita’s eyes had glistened at this desperate proposal!

Matsushita had grown thin as they made their way through the jungle, though none was more adept at killing snakes and swallowing their livers than he, gulping them one after another like oysters and leaving their disembowelled remains to be sucked and gnawed by his men as best they could for cooking-fires must not be lit lest the smoke give away their position. As he grew thinner, Matsushita’s eyes grew larger and burned more fiercely than ever. Now he would be part of the glorious capture of the Perak River Bridge! And he had whipped his men forward to reach it and snip those glistening wires before the British engineers had time to press down the plunger. It would be done! For the Emperor!

Matsushita had asked for volunteers for this rash assignment. The men had all volunteered, of course. Even if any of them had not felt like doing so it would never have done to let Lieutenant Matsushita get it into his head that you were a coward … ‘Well then, I must pick the men for this patrol myself,’ he had said, his eyes piercing each man in turn. And he had done so, while the troops waited in silence to hear their fate. Presently Kikuchi heard his name spoken.

At about midnight on 22 December while they had been camped some distance from the Perak River Bridge in a jungle of wild rubber, a tremendous boom had reverberated from the south. So astonishing was this noise that for several moments afterwards all the night-sounds of the jungle ceased, a dreadful silence prevailed: even small insects hesitated before eating each other and snakes paused as they squirmed in and out of their slimy homes. Kikuchi and his comrades had gazed at each other in consternation: this noise could only have come from one source. The British had demolished the bridge which they had been hoping to capture intact. White with shock at this lost opportunity Matsushita nevertheless had insisted on examining his maps to see whether the map reference of the bridge tallied with the direction from which the sound had appeared to come. It did. Matsushita uttered a groan and bowed his head to the earth. Later, he took Kikuchi aside and said in a low voice: ‘Thoughts of self-condemnation overwhelm my heart, Kikuchi. Our lives will have to compensate for our error.’ Kikuchi had nodded soothingly, though it had occurred to him that there seemed to be no particular reason why troops who had merely obeyed orders should have to take a share in the Lieutenant’s error.

In front of them now Nakamura’s tank had come to rest, bringing the column behind it to a halt. A whispered consultation was taking place: it was thought that they must now be very near the first position defended by the British. Matsushita had slipped off the tail of the lorry like a panther, invisible in the darkness. Kikuchi stood up carefully and managed to get a glimpse back down the road. Behind them stretched a column of some two dozen twenty-ton tanks, the moonlight glinting on their turrets; infantry lorries were interspersed with the more distant tanks. He knew that a detachment of lighter ‘whippet’ tanks came behind the medium tanks but he could not see them for a bend in the road.

Kikuchi sank back, a little reassured by this impressive sight. Each of the medium tanks, he knew, carried a four-pounder anti-tank gun and two heavy .303 machine-guns. But, in addition, a mortar had been fitted to each tank; although it was fixed so that it could only cover one side of the road, the tanks had been arranged so that the mortars alternated, now on one side, now on the other. There would certainly be a heavy enough fire from the tanks. Perhaps he might have a chance, after all. But even if he survived this battle there would still be another battle afterwards and another after that. How many weeks or months would this nightmarish life continue? He no longer had any idea whereabouts on the Malayan peninsula they were, or even what date it might be. The New Year had begun, that was all he knew for certain.

And what a New Year it had been; Matsushita had insisted on leading the unit on a wide detour through dense jungle and swamp to the west of the road to strike behind the position fortified by the British at Kampar. And so, while in Tokyo hundreds of miles away his family and friends had been exchanging greetings and celebrating with dishes of soba, Kikuchi and his comrades had been plunging through terrifying swamps, often sinking up to the chest in stinking slime which threatened to swallow them up and covered them with leeches fattening visibly on their tender flesh. Instead of listening to the temple bells on New Year’s Eve as they rang out their message: ‘All is vanity and unreality in this world!’ and having a good time, Kikuchi had had to drag himself after Matsushita, his flesh lacerated by thorny vines, hair standing on end as poisonous snakes reared to right and left. And with nothing to chew but dry, uncooked rice and an occasional piece of snake dropped by Matsushita when he had gulped its liver in accordance with the pamphlet ‘Read This Alone and the War Can Be Won’. As a matter of fact, it had been in the course of this particular ordeal that Kikuchi had first begun to wonder whether Matsushita was altogether sane. For, although he had always had a tendency to ramble on about Kikuchi’s uncle, the legendary Bugler, he had now taken to making from time to time a slighting remark about him, hinting that in a contest of bravery and devotion to duty he, Matsushita, would by no means have come off second best to Uncle Kikuchi … and even going so far as to suggest that, although to blow a bugle with one’s dying breath was all very fine in its way, if you were dying anyway you might just as well blow a bugle with it as do anything else. And, as if this were not sufficiently dismaying, there was worse. For Matsushita, as he plunged relentlessly on through swamp and jungle, hacking vigorously with his tasselled sabre, eyes burning, would occasionally pause and chant half aloud, half to himself, a weird song in a language which Kikuchi had never heard before. Often Matsushita would press on so swiftly that he would leave his men behind and they would find him waiting impatiently for them when at last they caught up. One day Kikuchi, hastening after his commander who as usual had got far ahead of the rest of the squad, had come upon him unexpectedly in a sort of clearing. Matsushita had thrown off his uniform for some reason and was standing there stark naked except for the bulging leeches which covered him from head to foot. Moreover, he was surrounded by a little circle of poisonous snakes which had reared up around him as if to listen as he sang to them, conducting himself with his sabre. Kikuchi tried to make out the strange words …

… Hanc sententiam dicamus …
Floreat Sand … ha … haa … liaaaaah!

As this weird and chilling incantation came to an end, Matsushita took the sabre and with a swift, clean swipe beheaded one snake after another. Then he swiftly gathered up the writhing bodies by the tails, stood there for a moment with a fistful of lashing bodies spraying blood over his thighs as if deep in thought, and finally went to sit against the bole of a tree, prising them open one after another with two stubby fingers to search out the liver and pop it in his mouth. An enormous leech, Kikuchi could not help noticing, had battened on the Lieutenant’s private parts. Kikuchi from a screen of fronds gazed in dismay at his leader, wondering what to do. But what was there to do, except report for duty as if nothing had happened?

However, as Kikuchi approached, Matsushita addressed him quite rationally and even, once the rest of the unit had arrived, delivered a short, invigorating lecture on Japanese National Spirit, enlarging on the virtues that this Spirit would bring to the oppressed races of Eastern Asia once the decadent Europeans had been thrust aside by the Imperial Army. While he spoke the members of his unit stood ‘at ease’ in an exhausted row, eyeing the leech which adhered to the Lieutenant’s private parts and wondering whether they should bring it to his attention.

48

The column had again halted. On a whispered order the infantry stumbled out of the lorries and dispersed to the sides of the road. How stiff were Kikuchi’s limbs from the hours he had spent sitting on his heels in the back of the lorry! Since that dreadful ordeal in the jungle and the subsequent capture of Kampar fortress he had been obliged to travel fifty miles or more without transport. The Okabe Regiment, which had made the frontal assault on Kampar, had suffered losses and so the Ando Regiment (and Kikuchi) had had to take up the pursuit again. Since the retreating enemy had taken care to demolish the bridges behind them Kikuchi and his comrades had found themselves travelling on bicycles. This had not seemed too unpleasant at first (anything would have seemed better than wading up to your armpits through leech-filled swamps) but in no time Kikuchi was exhausted; whenever they came to a stream or a river it had to be waded and this entailed carrying his bicycle and equipment on his shoulders. Presently too, his tyres had punctured in the heat like those of his comrades: they had been obliged to rattle along on the rims (this sound, like a company of tanks approaching in the distance, sowed alarm among the retreating British). But so rapidly was the 15th Engineer Regiment repairing the bridges behind them that in due course the Ando Regiment had once more been overtaken by the heavy vehicle, artillery and tank units. Now here they all were, ready to attack by moonlight! Kikuchi’s bayonet caught a glint of the moon as he waited, his heart pounding, and he thought: ‘How beautiful!’

But he hardly had time to consider this thought before the night erupted into a volcano spitting fire and projectiles. The tank cannons flashed and roared, tracer poured in fiery streams into the darkness and Kikuchi found himself charging forward. A moment earlier it had seemed that he could scarcely hobble, so stiff were his limbs … but now he found himself running like a hare, with mouth open and lips curled back to emit a terrifying scream which, however, he himself could not hear at all, such was the noise of gunfire. Ahead of him galloped Matsushita, sword in one hand, revolver in the other. A grenade flashed in front of him but the Lieutenant had thrown himself into the ditch beside the road which lay in the shadow of the jungle, or fallen into it, more likely. Kikuchi had reached the comparative safety of this ditch a moment earlier and now crept along it towards Matsushita. Ahead, rolls of wire and a few concrete blocks had been set up across the road. Already, as they watched, the leading tank, still raking the British position with tracer, had reached the first of these pitiful obstacles, had crushed and snapped the barbed wire and brushed aside the concrete blocks and earthworks as easily as if they had been matchboxes. But this was Nakamura’s tank. Kikuchi heard Matsushita hiss respectfully between his teeth as he watched it.

Though the British had been driven back to the fringes of the jungle a steady drizzle of rifle fire punctuated by grenades still poured out of the darkness. Only a madman would consider showing himself on the road itself under such a fire, but the next moment Matsushita had leapt out of the ditch and was signalling to his men to follow the tank down the channel it had battered into the British defences The column must drive on deep into the British lines and seize the bridges before they could be demolished. Nakamura must not get all the glory for his tank company!

Kikuchi, hastening after the Lieutenant, stumbled over a dead Hyderabadi, and in doing so grazed the palms of his hands on the road surface. Picking up his rifle again he hastened on over the flattened wire. Nakamura’s tank had turned aside to blaze away at a fortified position in the jungle from which, in the blackness, a machine-gun was still dribbling fire, striking sparks off the tank’s armoured turret. Meanwhile, more tanks had surged past Nakamura’s, motors roaring, down the road into the haven of peace and darkness on the other side of the road-block.

At this moment Kikuchi became aware that the infantry lorry had followed him and was gunning its motor at his back as it negotiated the ruined and abandoned British defences. He stood aside and swung himself aboard as it passed. Other members of his platoon, already inside, grabbed him and hauled him in. A few yards further on another figure loomed out of the darkness and sprang aboard like a panther. A mortar bomb exploding behind them lit up the face of this latecomer … it was Matsushita, his lips working, eyes burning, speechless with excitement. Kikuchi sniffed carefully. Even if he had not seen the Lieutenant’s face he could have told who it was by the strange odour, unlike anything he had ever smelled before, which came from him. He sniffed again. If electricity had a smell, that was what Matsushita would have smelled like at that moment.

Now the lorry had reached the dark haven which lay between the Hyderabads and the next British position. More tanks were following them, dark shapes on the moonlit road, and soon the sound of gunfire was left far behind. They drove on down the road as rapidly as they dared without lights in the wake of the two tanks which had taken over the lead. Nakamura’s tank was now cruising immediately behind them.

On and on they went into the darkness. Kikuchi was in a trance, his mind whirling. He became aware presently that his mouth was open and that he was panting like a dog, his tongue hanging over his lower lip. It must be the heat, he thought. He closed his mouth and tried not to pant, afraid that Matsushita might regard it as a sign of fear. Now the word was passed back that the leading tank was approaching Milestone 61. Air reconnaissance had revealed further road-blocks at this point. The time was 4.30 a.m. It was still pitch dark. Kikuchi experienced a craving to see daylight once more.

Suddenly there was a flash and a violent explosion just ahead of them. The leading tank had struck a mine buried in the road: instantly the quiet night erupted into fire and uproar. Once more Kikuchi found himself tumbling out on to the road with his companions, screaming at the top of his lungs. Streams of tracer poured over his head from Nakamura’s tank behind the lorry, so close that it seemed to scorch his cheek with its fiery breath.

In the darkness something hit him a sharp blow on the side of the head: perhaps the tail-gate of the lorry or the butt of someone’s rifle. The blow dazed him; he stood still in a pool of darkness. It was like being in a cage of bright dotted lines criss-crossing each other … it was like a firework display: amid the rushing streams of fire from the tracer there bloomed and died magnificent white and orange chrysanthemums. The white lights which flickered and dribbled from pillboxes set back from the road might have been merely the sparklers which children hold in their hands. The air was alive, too, with the hum and whir of insect wings just as when cherry blossom covers the branches with its lovely foam in the spring and all the hives are busy. ‘How beautiful! he thought for the second time. And he continued to stand there while enemy bullets fell so thickly around him that it was just like a sudden hailstorm rattling on the slopes of Mount Fuji. ‘Look at this!’ he marvelled, contemplating the way the bullets furrowed the soft tar of the road-surface like thick worms in the moonlight.

Suddenly his arm was roughly taken and he was thrown down again into the ditch at the side of the road. The shock brought him partly to his senses and he thought that perhaps an Englishman was at this moment fumbling with his shirt before slipping a knife between his ribs. But the voice which spoke to him spoke Japanese and belonged to Corporal Hayashi. Another tank had been immobilized near where they crouched, perhaps even that of Major Toda himself: its track, struck by a shot from an anti-tank rifle, had unrolled and lay flat on the road; nevertheless, its guns continued firing into the jungle. A few moments later the leading tank, attempting once again to batter a channel through the defences, touched off another mine and was wrecked. Small, dark shapes rose and fell against a patch of moonlit sky. Grenades! Corporal Hayashi paternally gripped Kikuchi’s head and thrust it down into the ditch; Kikuchi felt the ground shake all around him. But the Corporal’s grip on his neck had loosened and when Kikuchi raised his head again, the hand fell away. Hayashi had been struck on the temple by a fragment of shrapnel but his spectacles, untouched, continued to glint in a friendly way at Kikuchi.

Meanwhile, other tanks had come up and grouped themselves so close to each other that it seemed as if a battleship, guns blazing, had moored here in the middle of the jungle, pouring a steady, concentrated fire at each side of the road. Time passed. Another tank was knocked out by an anti-tank gun firing from a fortified position. More time passed. Still tracer zipped into the jungle, still the cannon and mortar boomed. The British fire, though, had diminished. The anti-tank guns were silent. Now the tanks had left their solid formation and were nudging into the jungle. Kikuchi could make out other figures huddled not far away in the cover of the ditch; among them Matsushita crouched, giving orders to the men with him. Soon they would make a bayonet charge to put an end to the stubborn resistance of the Punjabis.

Only a few yards from where Kikuchi waited for the fateful moment when he would have to leap up from the shelter of the ditch, Charlie Tyrrell was kneeling behind a buttress of earth in a litter of spent cartridges trying to estimate from the flashes of their guns whether the tanks were making any progress in their efforts to force a way through the defences. If the tanks could be held until daylight there might be some prospect of a counter-attack, either by the Argylls or by the Punjabis of the 28th Brigade who were resting some miles further back. On the other hand, his own battalion had already suffered such heavy losses from the tank barrage that he doubted whether they would be able to hold off a determined assault by the Japanese infantry. Charlie himself had so far escaped unscathed except for a flesh wound in the calf which had soaked one sock with blood causing it to squelch disagreeably when he walked; but this wound, combined with the shattering noise of the guns and his own fundamental weariness, cast him into a dream-like frame of mind in which he found it hard to think constructively. But even if his state of mind had been more normal he would have found it no easier; it was almost impossible in the darkness, with communications within the battalion difficult and those between the battalion and the Brigade H.Q. now severed, to form a clear idea of what was happening.

The Brigadier, meanwhile, was anxiously prowling about his headquarters in the rubber plantation. All the telephone wires had been cut by this time but he knew that, as he had expected, the Japanese had broken through the Hyderabads and had been halted, at least for a while, by the Punjabis. He now summoned a despatch rider and sent him up the road to the Punjabis, ordering them to hold on to their positions by the road even if the Japanese tanks broke through. At the same time he ordered the Argylls to set up road-blocks.

It was the Argylls’ habit to take breakfast early in order to fight on a full stomach. So, having breakfasted before dawn they set to work improvising road-blocks in the darkness, one where the trunk road first entered the rubber, the other a hundred yards in front of the bridge at Trolak (that is, the first of the two bridges the Japanese would reach): this road-block was covered by two armoured cars with anti-tank rifles; at the same time volunteers for a Molotov Cocktail party were called for and marshalled in readiness.

Though the sky was at last beginning to grow pale it was still very dark on the road. Sinclair, in his anxiety to find out how A and D Companies were faring in the rubber on the other side of the trunk road, borrowed a motor-cycle and set off on it rather unsteadily down the estate road from Brigade Head-quarters. As he came careering out of the rubber trees, going rather faster than he intended and meaning to cross the trunk road and follow the estate road which continued among the trees on the far side, a vast shape suddenly loomed out of the darkness. A Japanese tank! Swerving violently he crashed into it, almost head on … but luckily for Sinclair he was thrown clear. As the tank advanced, one of its tracks ran over the motor-cycle, flattened, it, chewed it up and dropped it on the roadway behind. Sinclair dusted himself off shakily as the tank disappeared on down the road into the darkness. ‘Suh … suh … suh … suh … wine!’ he shouted after it. ‘You weren’t carrying any bloody luh … luh … luh … headlights!’ But all he could see, as he stood cursing beside his flattened motorcycle, was the rapidly diminishing flicker of the tank’s exhaust. And then he thought: ‘But my God! A Jap tank isn’t supposed to be here at all!’ And although he knew that by now it was almost certainly too late to warn anybody he began to run as fast as he could back the way he had come.

But if the tank had already passed through the long neck and out into the bottle itself, this meant that the Japanese had not only broken through the Punjabis position but that the first of the Argylls’ obstacles where the trunk road left the jungle and entered the rubber had also failed to stop it. What had happened was that the Japanese tanks, which had been successfully stopped by the Punjabis on the trunk road, had found a way round them: for it so happened that the line which the trunk road now followed was not the original one. The original road had snaked through the defile with a number of sharp bends. When the road, in the process of being improved, had been straightened out, the disused loops of the original road had been left and no anti-tank defences had been provided for them. Thus it was that Nakamura’s tank had discovered one of the disused loops and used it to circle around the British position, emerging in the rear. The Punjabis’ resistance now at last collapsed. Charlie collected those men of his own contingent who were still able to walk and retreated with them into the jungle, hoping that they might be able to make their way back to the Slim River Bridge and the British lines. It was just beginning to grow light as Charlie and his men were swallowed up by the great dark-green wall of jungle. Subsequently nothing more would be seen or heard of them.

Now the tanks of Major Toda and Lieutenant Nakamura with two more medium tanks behind them (the very last of which had just flattened a motor-cycle) and a single lorry-load of infantry which included a dismayed Kikuchi and the reckless Matsushita, had brushed aside one pitiful road-block where the road left the jungle and surged on down the road. This was already a victory for they had broken through the defile and could now operate in the greater freedom of the rubber estate if it suited them. But Nakamura had his eye on an even greater feat of arms … to capture the two bridges before they could be blown up!

In no time the leading tanks had reached the second road-block which the Argylls had set up a hundred yards in front of the bridge at Trolak. This second obstacle, prepared in haste, was scarcely more impressive than the first, but it was covered by the two Argyll armoured cars, together with the Molotov Cocktail party lurking in the ditch with brimming jam jars and petrol-soaked rags. It was now just light enough to make out the forms of the tanks as they appeared out of the darkness and came to a halt, checked by the concrete blocks and chains across the road.

Once they were motionless the officer in command of the armoured cars gave the signal and, one from each side of the road, they opened up with their anti-tank rifles. But their shots merely glanced off the tanks’ armour and ricocheted howling into the rubber. Now the cocktail party galloped up, flung their projectiles and hared away again for cover. Flames leaped up here and there and it seemed for a moment that one of the tanks had been set ablaze: but only the petrol which drenched its armour was on fire and presently it died out and the early morning gloom returned. In the meantime the tanks had turned their squat heads, as if in surprise, to look at the pitiful armoured cars which were opposing them. Their guns spoke. Instantly one armoured car was a smoking wreck, the other disabled. Tracer stitched up and down the Argyll’s hastily prepared defences. The tanks’ main armament and machine-guns continued to fire: to the boom of the guns and grenades and the chatter of small arms was added the frightful cracking of rubber trees in the estate behind.

Kikuchi and his comrades lay as flat as they could on the floor of the lorry as bullets ripped through the canvas awning above them. Even Matsushita was crouching down. But at this moment some instinct told him that the time had come and suddenly, grabbing a light machine-gun from the man beside him, he sprang out into the road. He was just in time to see the turret of the leading tank some yards ahead open up and Nakamura’s head appear. While Major Toda’s tank continued to blaze away to give him cover the heroic Nakamura carrying his sabre clambered over the road-block. At the other end of the bridge it was now possible to make out the explosive charge which had been set against one of the pillars and even the wires which led back from it. With bullets kicking up the dust all around him Nakamura raced forward sabre in hand and Matsushita, dashing after him, was just in time to see a British soldier leap up to hurl a grenade: Matsushita cut him down with a burst of machine-gun fire. With a mighty slash of his sabre Nakamura severed the wires leading to the demolition charge, then turned and sprinted back towards his tank. It seemed impossible that he should get back alive through that storm of bullets but in a moment he had vaulted on to the nose of the tank and was slithering down like a snake into the safety of its hole. The turret-cover shut after him with a clang.

How long would it be before the tanks had burst through the roadblock in front of the bridge? With its motor roaring Nakamura’s tank began to batter this light obstruction aside. In desperation the officer commanding the armoured cars, ignoring the fire from the tanks a mere hundred yards down the road, took the brake off the disabled armoured car and pushed it down the slight incline on to the bridge where he tried unsuccessfully to overturn it. But even this gallant effort could not hope to stop the tanks. With a grinding of metal and concrete Nakamura’s tank had at last burst through on to the bridge, followed by that of Major Toda, guns still blazing. It took only a few moments to force aside the wrecked armoured car on the bridge. Once more the open road lay ahead.

On they raced in the direction of Kampong Slim, now in broad daylight. About a mile north of the village Nakamura, riding with head and shoulders out of his turret and surveying the road ahead like an eagle, saw movement. His eyes glittered. In an instant the turret-cover clanged shut again and the tank accelerated into a battalion of Punjabis of the 28th Brigade which had been hurriedly ordered forward by the Brigadier and were marching unsuspectingly up the road. The first company melted away under Nakamura’s machine-gun fire; of the second company only a score of men escaped uninjured, while the two rear companies managed to dive into the rubber on each side of the road. At Kampong Slim the trunk road took a sharp turn to the left and ran eastwards through the Cluny Estate. Here Nakamura found further prey, a battalion of Gurkha Rifles moving along the road in column of route without the least suspicion that a Japanese tank might be in the vicinity: they suffered the same fate as the Punjabis, caught in close order by Nakamura’s machine-guns and scythed down.

Next comes the turn of two batteries of the 137th Field Regiment dozing peacefully at the roadside in the Cluny Estate: one moment all is quiet and in good order, the next their camp is reduced to a smoking shambles and the tanks are moving on again. Major Toda would like to take the lead for already the greatest prize perhaps of the whole campaign is in reach: the Slim River Bridge itself! And so rapidly has the Toda tank company burst through the entire depth of the British defences that they find this vital bridge is defended by nothing more daunting than one troop of a Light Anti-Aircraft Battery equipped with Bofors guns, together with a party of sappers at work preparing the demolition of the bridge.

Just as one may sometimes see flights of terrified birds fleeing in front of a hurricane, now the Toda tank company is driving a random selection of vehicles in front of it. Men in lorries, in cars and on motor-cycles (even a man on horseback is to be seen galloping away though what he is doing there nobody knows); men pedal away furiously on bicycles and swerve up estate roads out of the path of the rumbling tanks. A party of signallers in a lorry rattles on to the bridge and shouts at the sappers who are putting the finishing touches to the charges laid against the far pillars and at the others who are unreeling the wire back to a safe distance to connect with the plunger: ‘Jap tanks are coming! Jap tanks are coming!’ Word is passed to the officer with the anti-aircraft guns. Only two of the Bofors will bear on the road. He prepares to fire over open sights and waits until he sees the first of the sinister vehicles surge into view, followed by another and another and another. At a hundred yards he opens fire on the leading tank but the light shells merely bounce off the tank’s armour and depart screaming into the rubber. The tanks in turn open fire on the unprotected guns. In a few moments they are out of action; men lie dead and wounded around them in a cloud of smoke and dust.

Nakamura, cunningly, has refused to acknowledge Major Toda’s attempts to take the lead and so the tracks of his tank are the first to thunder on to the long bridge. His eyes are on the explosive charge which is now so near; his eyes are on the sappers scattering into the rubber, two of them running with a reel unwinding between them. The hollow roar of the tracks on the bridge, the bridge itself seems to him to go on for ever. Nakamura, in the course of his earlier endeavour, has been wounded in the right hand and can no longer hold his sabre. Besides, rifle bullets are again zinging on the armour. He takes a machine-gun and directs it at the wire running along and away from the bridge until, yes, the bullets have severed it. The Slim River Bridge has been captured intact!

Major Toda orders one tank to remain guarding the bridge lest the British should return and try to demolish it. Then, Nakamura still in the lead, the other tanks move on a mile down the road in the direction of Tanjong Malim. It is now half past nine and the day is beginning to grow hot. Abruptly, the tanks find themselves in yet another formation of unsuspecting British troops moving up to the front line (which they still think is nineteen miles away). Nakamura at last has indulgently given up the lead to Lieutenant Ogawa. The British, although taken by surprise, will this time prove to be not such an easy prey, for this is the fine 155th Field Regiment. One detachment, working feverishly under a fusillade from the tanks, manages to unlimber its 4.5-inch howitzer; this gun opens fire from a mere thirty yards’ range at the leading tank, smashing it. The advance of the tanks is halted at last.

A little later, once the British had retired, Kikuchi inspected the wreckage of this tank. He found Lieutenant Ogawa, although dead, still sitting upright and holding his sabre. So ended the engagement at the Slim River.

49

In spite of the difficulties he had encountered with certain of the inmates of the dying-house which he had visited with Vera, Matthew could now only think of that institution with pleasure, for it had created a definite bond between them. There is something about a large number of dying people, provided you aren’t one of them, that can make you feel extraordinarily full of vitality. Matthew and Vera, once they had emerged from that shadowy world, had found themselves positively seething with high spirits. At the door of the dying-house, as soon as each saw the unwrinkled face of the other, they had fumbled for each other’s hands and gripped them tightly. Unfortunately, the complaints of the moribund smallholders had taken up so much time that they had been obliged to part again almost immediately, but this time not without making arrangements to meet again. Thus it happened that, in due course, they found themselves standing at the curved entrance to The Great World.

Vera saw Matthew’s seductively curved spine while she was still some distance away, and her heart went pit-a-pat (no young men with fists of steel for her!) He was wandering up and down muttering to himself and occasionally lifting his knuckles to nudge his spectacles up on his nose. Once, evidently having forgotten what he was doing there, he began to stride away purposefully, but presently, remembering, came back. By this time, however, Vera had decided that it was best to step forward and announce herself. She took his arm and they strolled into The Great World. A mysterious tropical twilight prevailed in which bats skidded here and there, squeaking and clicking. Matthew was surprised to find The Great World still open despite the war which, after all, was now not very far away. There had been changes, however. For one thing, there were no longer as many lights burning; now there was merely a faint glow here and there against which you saw milling shadows silhouetted in the dusk. But the sensation of tropical mystery, the unfamiliar aromas and sensations, had redoubled in intensity and the crowds at this hour seemed scarcely less abundant. That atmosphere of cigar smoke and sandalwood, incense and perfume, that stirring compound of food and dust and citrus blossom, of sensuality and spices filled Matthew with such excitement that his spirit began flapping violently inside him like a freshly caught fish in a basket.

Matthew was thirsty. Spotting a group of shadowy figures drinking something at a stall he steered Vera towards it. They were drinking from straws stuck in coconuts which had been topped like boiled eggs. How delicious! But Vera diverted him. Coconut milk was not good for men, she explained.

‘How d’you mean?’

Well, the Malays said it had a weakening effect of them, she murmured evasively, and directed him instead to another stall, insisting that he should partake of a strange, meaty, spicy soup of which she would only tell him the Chinese name (it was monkey soup, a powerful aphrodisiac). He tasted it and found it, well, rather strange. What did she say was in it? But again she would only tell him the Chinese name. The elderly, wizened Chinese who brewed it, who looked as if he himself was only on temporary leave from the dying-house, cackled with amusement at this burly warrior sharpening his jade arrows before loosing them at the Coral Palace. He stroked his wispy beard and peered into his vat of bubbling soup, remembering not without melancholy how in days gone by he had enjoyed an occasional bit of ‘fang-shih’ himself.

Yes, it was not at all bad, Matthew decided when he had tasted it again. In no time he had finished the bowl and asked for a second helping. Delicious! He would have ordered a third helping but Vera thought he had probably had enough and so they strolled on through the smoky, crowded darkness. Here and there tapers glimmered, illuminating a circle of oriental faces and Matthew even noticed a few soldiers. One of the soldiers, however, had his arm in a sling; another had a thick bandage round his head; others were drunken but silent now, and morose. With dull eyes they watched the swirling cosmopolitan bustle around them, as if from the other side of a plate-glass window. No doubt these poor fellows had been invalided back from the fighting in the north. One could hardly expect them to look cheerful.

Vera was worried about the progress of the war. She had already told Matthew that she had first come to Singapore in order to escape the Japanese in Shanghai. Now, every day, despite what it said in the newspapers, the Japanese seemed to be coming nearer and nearer. Where would she go if they reached Singapore? she asked Matthew, looking innocent and defenceless, but perhaps wondering at the same time whether all the monkey soup he had consumed might not have put him in a protective frame of mind.

‘Oh, don’t worry, I’ll look after you,’ said Matthew protectively, folding her comfortingly in his arms (how light and lithe her body felt against his own!). ‘Besides, I don’t think we need to worry about them getting this far.’ He nudged his spectacles up on his nose and added more cautiously: ‘At least, I’ll do my best. Let’s talk about something more cheerful.’ Vera agreed, aware that contact with this attractive man had caused her own yin essences to begin to flow in spite of her worries. They strolled on. Time passed in a dream. Presently, they found that The Great World was closing: these days, because of the war and the black-out, it was obliged to close early.

They spilled out of the gates in the departing crowd and sauntered through the warm darkness along a street of dilapidated shop-houses. A vast yellow moon was just rising over the tiled rooftops. A man with an ARP armband and a satchel over his shoulder flashed a torch in their faces and muttered something in Cantonese, but he did not try to stop them and they walked on. Matthew wanted her to return to the Mayfair with him but she refused with signs of indignation. She would not go where she was not wanted!

‘But you are wanted! What are you talking about?’

‘Mr Blackett and Miss Blackett have told me …’

‘But it’s nothing to do with them. The place belongs to me.’

‘It doesn’t matter. They behave badly. I am not going to fall over backwards to please them!’

‘Oh, really!’

But Vera had upset herself by remembering this injury done her by the Blacketts. For a few moments she became tearful, even blaming Matthew for having allowed her to be slighted, though she was by no means sure how he could have prevented it. ‘You should tell them to behave properly towards me,’ she said sulkily. ‘I am not going to Mayfair again.’ As it happened, it would have suited her quite well to go to the Mayfair since she felt too ashamed of her own tenement cubicle to take Matthew back there; having taken up such a strong position, however, she felt she could not now abandon it without loss of face. There was a drinking establishment round the corner: perhaps one of the booths there would be free.

They entered an open doorway where a number of men and women, all Chinese, sat at tables drinking and playing mah-jong, some on the pavement, some inside where there was a little light. They passed between the tables and entered an even dimmer corridor where a strong smell of garlic hung on the stagnant air. The proprietor hurried along beside them, chattering, but Vera paid no attention to him. The corridor was lined with curtained booths and as she went along she opened and closed one curtain after another to look inside; in each of them a man and a woman sat close together, drinking; despite a rich atmosphere of sensuality, however, nothing untoward appeared to be happening. Vera grimaced at Matthew. There were no unoccupied booths and she felt that he could have been a bit more helpful in suggesting somewhere for them to go. But as usual Matthew’s mind had wandered from the immediate problem, that of finding a place for them to be alone. His own voice had given him a shock a little earlier when he had heard it saying: ‘The place belongs to me.’ For it seemed to him that even this simple sentence cast its own moral shadow. The problem was this: could you own something like the Mayfair and still consider yourself a just man? But before he could properly get to grips with this question he glimpsed something in the last booth, where Vera had without ceremony opened and closed the curtain, which suggested a quite different line of enquiry. For in the last booth there were two startled Chinese men giving each other a rather peculiar handshake. What were they doing? he asked Vera.

‘I don’t know,’ she shrugged. ‘Perhaps secret society?’

‘D’you think that was the Singapore Grip?’

But Vera shook her head, smiling. She found his question so entertaining that her impatience with Matthew melted away.

All the booths were full. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to take Matthew back to where she lived. They set out once more into the warm darkness of the city and as they went along Vera tried to prepare him for the shock of seeing the tenement where she lived which was not far from the river at New Bridge Road. Presently, they were standing in front of it. She sighed at the smell of drains and the peeling paint and the huddled shapes you had to step over as you climbed the stairs, by no means sure that she had not made a mistake in bringing Matthew here. How sweet-smelling the air of Tanglin was by comparison! Thank heaven that at least she did not have to share her cubicle with several other people like her neighbours!

Still wondering about the Singapore Grip Matthew followed her along what he supposed must be a corridor, but a corridor in which people evidently made their homes; he found himself stepping over an ancient man with a face like a road map, asleep on the stairs over a pipe with a long metal stem. There was no light to speak of, just one naked bulb at the head of the stairs and a slender shaft of moonlight from a window in the distance … but there was enough to see the darker lumps of darkness that lay in neat rows along the walls on each side. He knew instantly, without knowing how he knew, which of these bundles were property and which were people. There was a smell in the air, too, besides the smell of drains that Vera was worried about … he recognized it, a vaguely smoky smell, as of smouldering rubbish or rags, the smell of poverty.

These walls on each side, however, proved not to be walls at all, but merely flimsy wooden partitions. Originally this floor had comprised perhaps three or four large rooms, but in order to maximize the rent from it the landlord had subdivided it into a vast number of cubicles not much bigger than cupboards, separated from the corridor by hanging clothes or bead curtains. Matthew peered into some of these dark receptacles as he passed by, but one had to go carefully for fear of treading on the hand or face of an exhausted coolie who had slumped out into your path: in one of them a little old lady with her hair in a bun was on her knees, muttering prayers in front of a scroll of red ideographs with red candles and joss-sticks smouldering beside her; in another a family was grouped around a blue flame eating rice. Someone was coughing wearily nearby, a long, wretched, tubercular cough, the very sound of resignation or despair. So this was what life was like here!

Vera’s cubicle, by comparison with the others, was comfortable: it was at the end of the corridor not far from where the only tap dripped into a bucket and it shared half a window with the next cubicle. It was very small (Matthew could have crossed it in one stride) but neat and had a little furniture: the iron bed which for Vera symbolized her Russian ancestry, a table made from the door of a wardrobe resting on a tea-chest, on which, in turn, rested a mirror and a few little bottles of cosmetics. There was an oil-lamp and a Primus stove; biscuit-coloured tatami covered the floor. The clothes passed on to her by Joan hung beside the window (her Chinese clothing had been packed away in mothballs under the bed) with a pair of wooden clogs and a pair of leather shoes neatly arranged beneath them. On the floor by the Primus stove were two bowls and a saucepan; a jam jar contained chopsticks and a porcelain spoon.

While Vera lit the oil-lamp Matthew stood uncertainly beside her with his hands in his pockets, touched by the simplicity of her home. When there was enough light to see each other by they both felt embarrassed. To conceal her shyness Vera began to rummage unnecessarily in her handbag. Matthew gazed at the pictures torn from magazines which were pinned to the partition by the bed: there was a picture of someone whom he supposed must be the last Tsar of Russia, looking very hairy, and another of King George VI and another of Myrna Loy. He sat down on the bed beside which there was a pile of movie magazines and some books. Three or four of the books were in Chinese (among them, though he did not know it, a treatise on sexual techniques, for Vera took such matters seriously); there was a copy of Self-Help indented with the stamp of the American Missionary Society, Harbin, and a tattered collection of other books in English, including Waley’s 170 Chinese Poems, once the property of the United Services Club and Percy F. Westerman’s To the Fore with the Tanks, much scribbled on in red pencil by a child.

Vera sat down on the bed beside him. She no longer experienced the slippery sensation she had felt before and which she usually felt when aroused. Concerned with the impression that her room might be making on her visitor the flow of her yin essences had declined to a trickle. She sensed, too, that Matthew’s yang force had also been diverted into another channel and now lacked the fierce concentration of the unbridled yang spirit.

Indeed, Matthew, sitting quietly in this dimly lit cubicle, not much bigger, he supposed, than the closet where a man like Walter Blackett would hang his suits, was again brooding on the question of property and wondering whether it was possible to be wealthy and yet to live a just life. For, in a competitive society, how could you be wealthy in a vacuum? Were you not wealthy against other people poorer than you? No matter how justly you tried to behave, and did behave, no matter how honest and charitable and sympathetic to suffering, did not this possession of wealth, which allowed you to go to the opera and drink fine wines now and then, which made your experience of life less harsh in almost every way, cast a subtle blight over all your aspirations? Could someone live justly in Tanglin while at the same time people lived in this wretched tenement riddled with malnutrition and tuberculosis (he could still hear that weary, relentless coughing through the partitions)? This question was quite apart from the fact that the man coughing had been sucked into Malaya by the great implosion of British capital invested in cheap tropical land and labour, for it could certainly be strongly argued that he was a beneficiary rather than the victim of British enterprise, including that of Blackett and Webb among others. He put a comforting arm round Vera’s shoulders, thinking that she must not stay here to catch tuberculosis from her neighbours and at the same time wondering how one should behave in order to live justly.

Vera, meanwhile, with Matthew’s arm around her had begun to feel slippery again, so that presently, if you had tried to grasp her, she would have sprung out of your fingers like a bar of soap in the bathtub. She wriggled closer and put an arm around his waist. This, in turn, had a certain effect on Matthew for the monkey soup had not ceased to flow richly in his veins. The yang spirit, which had been dozing like a tiger in its cave, was abruptly awoken by that lithe yet slippery arm which had encircled his waist: now it came snarling out of its lair, determined to be satiated, come what might.

Without receiving conscious instructions from their owner, Matthew’s hands began to wander over Vera’s clothes and in due course found some buttons. But the buttons proved to be ornamental and so, after a considerable interval of pulling and tugging which was plainly getting his hands nowhere, Vera decided that they would have to be discreetly helped in the right direction, though this tended to undermine the impression of surprised innocence she had been hoping to convey. Even this did not really improve matters, however, because Matthew’s fingers were made clumsy by theoretical instructions which began belatedly to arrive from his brain. Finally, Vera had to become thoroughly practical and take off all her clothes herself: they did not amount to much, anyway, and if crumpled up would easily have fitted into one of Matthew’s pockets. Matthew also took the opportunity to remove his own clothes and, as he did so, a dense cloud of white dust rose from his loins and hung glimmering in the lamplight. Vera looked surprised at so much dust, wondering whether his private parts might not be covered in cobwebs too. But Matthew hurriedly explained that it was just talcum from his evening bath. Once this had been settled the twin rivers of yin and yang which, though flowing in the same direction, one in shadow, the other in sunlight, had been separated by a range of mountains, now begun to turn gently towards each other as the mountains became hills and the hills sloped down to the wide valley.

And yet before the rivers joined, one river flowing into the other, the other flowing into the one, there was still some way to go. Vera, who had carefully educated herself in the arts of love, did not believe that this sacred art, whose purpose was to unite her not only with her lover but with the earth and the firmament, too, should take place in the Western manner which to her resembled nothing so much as a pair of drunken rickshaw coolies colliding briefly at some foggy cross-roads at the dead of night. But in order to do things properly it was clear that she would have to give Matthew a hasty but basic education in what was expected of him. For one thing, a common terminology had to be established; Matthew’s grasp of such matters had proved even more elementary than she had feared. Indeed, he seemed thoroughly bewildered as he stood there naked and blinking, for he had taken off his spectacles and put them down on the pile of books by the bed. So Vera set to work giving names to various parts, first pointing them out where applicable on Matthew, then on her own pretty person.

‘This is called “kuei-tou” or “yü-ching” or, how d’you say, hmm, “jade flower-stem” … or sometimes “nan-ching” or even “yang-feng”, OK?’ But Matthew could only gaze at her in astonishment and she had to repeat what she had said.

‘Now d’you think you’ve got it?’ she enquired, and could not help adopting the rather condescending tone which had once been adopted by the missionary who had taught her English years ago.

‘You mean, all those words mean that?’ asked Matthew, indicating the part in question.

‘Well, not literally, of course. One, you see, means “head of turtle”, another “jade stalk” and so on … but they all add up to that, d’you see now?’ Vera was becoming a little impatient.

‘I’m not sure …’

‘Look, I just tell you names for things, OK? We talk about it later.’

Matthew agreed, still looking baffled.

‘Here is called “yin-nang” or “secret pouch” and here on me is called …’ but Matthew had not been properly paying attention and all this had to be repeated, too. He was shown the ‘yü-men’ or the ‘ch’iung-men as it was sometimes known and that naturally led them on to the ‘yü-tai’ and, from the particular to the general, to ‘fang-shih’ or ‘ou-yu’. Vera held forth on all this with rapidity, certainly, but not without touching on the Five Natural Moods or Qualities which he might expect to find in himself, nor the Five Revealing Signs which should be manifested by his partner: the flushing pink of throat and cheeks, perspiration on nose like dew on grass in the morning, depth and rapidity of breathing, increase of slipperiness and so forth. And Matthew found himself obliged also to acquire a working knowledge of the Hundred Anxious Feelings (though there was no time to go through them one by one), the Five Male Overstrainings, and the medicinal liquor that he might expect to lap up from his lover’s body at the Three Levels, for example, that sweet little cordial called Liquid Snow exuding from between the breasts at the Middle Level (good for gall-stones).

Vera could now see that the mighty yang spirit which, a little earlier, had seized Matthew and held him up by the ears like a rabbit, was no longer gripping him so firmly. She decided to content herself with once more running over the names of the most important parts so there would be no misunderstanding. And it was lucky she did so because it turned out that there was a part she had forgotten to mention the first time, namely, the ‘chieh-shan-chu’ or ‘pearl on jade threshold’. Drawing up her knees to her chin she pointed it out with a magenta fingernail.

Matthew peered at her, blinking. He could not for the life of him think why all this elaborate ‘naming of parts’ should be necessary. However, he bent his head obediently to look for the ‘chieh-shan-chu’. After some moments of inspecting her closely he brought the oil-lamp a little closer and put his spectacles on again.

‘Oh yes, I think I see what you mean,’ he murmured politely.

‘Good,’ said Vera. ‘Now we can begin.’

Matthew brightened and after a moment’s hesitation took off his spectacles again. But what Vera meant was that she could now begin to explain what he would need to know in order to bring to a successful conclusion their first and relatively simple manoeuvre, known as ‘Bamboo Swaying in Spring Wind’. After that they might have a go at ‘Butterfly Hovering over Snow White Peony’ and then later, if all went well, she might wake up a girlfriend who slept in a neighbouring cubicle and invite her to join them for ‘Goldfish Mouthing in Crystal Tank’ if they were not too tired by then. But for the moment Matthew still had a few things to learn.

‘What is it you don’t understand, Matthew?’ she enquired with the monolithic patience she had so admired in her missionary teacher. Matthew sighed. It was clear that some more time would elapse before the rivers of yin and yang reached their confluence at last. All this time the sound of weary coughing had not ceased for a moment.

50

No doubt there were many unexpected developments in Singapore in the first two weeks of January but few can have been as unexpected as that which affected the Blacketts and the Langfields. How could it have come about that these two families which had hitherto held each other in such abhorrence and contempt should, after so many years, establish amicable social relations? Any close observer (Dr Brownley, for instance, who had made what amounted to a hobby of the mutual detestation of one family for the other) would have found it most unlikely that the Blacketts would ever issue an invitation and quite improbable that the Langfields would accept it. Nevertheless, it did come about. It came about under the pressure of circumstances, as the head of each family became concerned for the welfare of his women-folk.

Walter and Solomon Langfield, bumping into each other by chance at the Long Bar of the Singapore Club, as they had done, indeed, week in, week out, for the better part of thirty years, happened at last to recognize each other. Recognition led to a wary offer of a stengah, made in a manner so casual that it was almost not an offer at all, and an equally wary acceptance. In a little while they were patting each other on the back and bullying each other pleasantly for the privilege of signing the chit. And, although each time one of them cordially scribbled his signature on the pad which the barman handed to him he might secretly have been thinking: ‘I knew as much … The old blighter is “pencil shy” (the quintessence of meanness in the clubs of Singapore), outwardly at least no ripple of discord was allowed to corrugate this new-found friendship. Soon Walter was confiding to old Langfield his anxiety for his wife and daughters. This, it turned out, exactly mirrored a similar concern, ‘since the RAF did not seem to be putting up much of a show’, that Solomon felt for Mrs Langfield and little Melanie beneath the bombs. The women should be sent to a safer place, it was agreed, perhaps to Australia where both firms had branch offices. But neither Mrs Langfield nor Mrs Blackett would be very good at fending for herself. Why should they not travel together? Together they would manage much better. Perhaps by pulling some strings it might be possible for Monty or young Nigel Langfield to accompany them. And so in no time it had been agreed: it only remained to persuade the women that this was the best course.

‘By the way, Blackett,’ old Solomon Langfield was unable to resist saying with ill-concealed malice as they prepared to go their separate ways, ‘it’s bad luck about your jubilee. I suppose you’ll have to call it off under the present circumstances.’

‘Not at all,’ replied Walter coldly. ‘We’ve been asked to go ahead with it for the sake of civilian morale. I hope you don’t mean to call yours off?’

‘We aren’t due to have ours for another couple of years,’ Solomon Langfield, out-manoeuvred and cursing inwardly, was forced to admit.

‘Oh? I didn’t realize that we had been established longer than you and Bowser,’ said Walter condescendingly.

‘By that time, at any rate,’ replied Solomon, trying to recover the ground he had lost, ‘we should be at peace again and able to do things properly.’

‘By that time,’ retorted Walter, delivering the coup de grâce, ‘another war will probably have broken out or heaven knows what will have happened.’

When Walter mentioned evacuation to Australia in the company of the Langfield women to his own family, however, his proposal was received with indignation and dismay. To travel with Langfields was bad enough, but to be expected to live cheek by jowl with them in Australia was more than flesh and blood could endure. Joan flatly refused to consider leaving with anybody, let alone a Langfield. There was a war on and plenty for an able-bodied young woman to do in Singapore! As for Kate, she was alarmed at the prospect of having as a constant companion Melanie, whom she considered capable of any outrage or excess. For there were times, particularly when there was some authority to be flouted, when Melanie’s behaviour verged on the insane, so it seemed to Kate. Now, while she listened to her parents arguing, she remembered an occasion at school when the girls in her dormitory had planned a midnight feast. It had been agreed that each of them would contribute something to eat or drink, a couple of biscuits saved from tea-time, say, or a bottle of lemonade crystals. She remembered how they had all crouched, shivering and breathless with excitement, on the waxed floor between two beds, each producing what she had managed to collect … until last of all, Melanie, with an air of triumph had slapped something down on the floor with a dull thud. An enormous dead chicken! She had somehow broken into the caretaker’s chicken coop, strangled a chicken, plucked it and here it was! Well, it seemed to Kate that someone who instead of a bar of chocolate or a couple of Marie biscuits brought a raw chicken to a midnight feast could hardly be called sane. What would she get up to in Australia with only her mother to restrain her?

Monty, on the other hand, brightened up when he heard that there was a prospect of either Nigel Langfield or himself accompanying the women-folk to safety. He believed he could count on Nigel to show the necessary courage and foolishness to insist on sticking it out at his post. Things had not been going well recently for Monty but now they might be looking better. In the meantime he was having to fight a determined rear-guard action with medical certificates from Dr Brownley to prevent himself being enlisted in the Local Defence Corps. The air-raids, too, increasingly alarmed him. Well, if there was a chance of escorting women to safety only an idiot would linger in Singapore to be bombed. He would crack off to Australia and take charge of the firm’s office there … as an ‘essential occupation’ that should keep him out of the beastly Army, with luck.

But after a day or two Monty’s spirits sank again. No European men were being allowed to leave without special permission and it soon became clear that such permission would not be granted to either himself or Nigel under the present circumstances despite more string-pulling by both Walter and Solomon. Evidently some spiteful little official in some office was seizing his opportunity to pay off a grudge against the merchant community. And he had to suffer!

In due course it was decided that Kate and Melanie and their mothers should leave for Australia on the Narkunda, sailing in mid-January. Walter agreed provisionally that Joan should stay a little longer but insisted that she would have to follow her mother if the situation got any worse. The truth was that Walter had need of Joan in Singapore, not only to supervise the running of the household in the absence of his wife, but also to lend a hand in the increasingly frantic work involved in administering Blackett and Webb’s affairs from temporary offices in Tanglin, for by now the air-raids on the docks, spasmodic hitherto, had made continued occupation of the premises on Collyer’s Quay too dangerous. Moreover, Walter still had not quite given up hope that Matthew might suffer a change of heart and decide he must marry Joan, after all. This match was such a good idea! That was what upset Walter, to see a good idea go to waste. There persisted in his mind the feeling that in some way Joan’s marriage could still be the foundation of Blackett and Webb’s recovery. But how? It was an instinct, nothing more.

An impetus was needed, that much was certain! Whether or not Singapore might survive as a military strong-point in the Far East it was clear that as a business centre it was finished for some time to come. As a result all Walter’s efforts were now directed towards the running-down of the company’s Singapore operations, the transferring of business to branches overseas in Britain, America and Australia and the suspension of that which could not be transferred.

And there still remained as a reminder of his own weakness those vast quantities of rubber in his godowns on the Singapore River. He had barely been able to shift a fraction of it. Nor was it any comfort to tell himself that he was the victim of circumstances beyond his control. Difficulties are made to be overcome! A businessman must shape his own environment to suit his needs: once he finds himself having to submit to it he is doomed. Once, years ago, while leafing through a copy of Wide World, he had come across a blurred photograph which, for reasons which he had not understood, had made a great impression on him. Well, if he had not understood it then, he certainly understood it now! It was a photograph, very poorly printed, of some dying animal, perhaps a panther or a leopard, it was hard to tell. Too weak to defend itself, this animal was being eaten alive by a flock of hideous birds. Walter had never been able to forget that picture. He had thought of it not long ago while standing at old Mr Webb’s bedside. And now he thought of it again, reflecting that there comes a time, inevitably, when the strong become, first weak, then helpless.

Walter knew very well, mind you, that other rubber merchants shared at least some of his own difficulties. Even old Solomon Langfield had admitted in an unguarded moment that he had large stocks waiting on the quays for a carrier. This was no comfort, however: Walter had always held in contempt businessmen who excused their own failures by matching them with those of other people. There was a way of shipping that rubber, he knew, just as there was a way of doing everything. But the present state of the docks baffled and exhausted him: the quays were jammed with shipping still loaded with war material said to be urgently needed by the military. Yet nobody was doing anything about it: the labour force had largely decamped, doubtless because they were unwilling to risk their lives under constant air-raids; what unloading was taking place was being done by the troops themselves: Walter had tried to suggest to a military acquaintance that these same men should reload with rubber ‘urgently needed for the War Effort elsewhere’, but the man had looked at him as if he were out of his mind.

Walter, even in his weakened state, had been stubborn enough to keep on trying. He had paid another visit to the Governor, suggesting that he might intercede with the War Council to provide a labour company under military discipline (which might encourage them to turn up for work) in order to start reloading the great backlog of rubber before it was too late. But Sir Shenton Thomas had barely listened to him. Although he was normally sympathetic to the Colony’s mercantile community, he had shown visible signs of impatience with Walter’s difficulties. That stuffed shirt! He had hardly even taken the trouble to make an excuse, muttering something about it being all he could do to prevent the military from commandeering what labour was already available to the rubber industry … Relations with Malaya Command and Singapore Fortress, already bad at the outbreak of war, had got worse … Walter would kindly realize that the community had other needs, above all civil defence, besides his own … Well! Walter had come close to asking him whose taxes he thought paid his bloody salary! Affronted, he had taken his leave. The bales of rubber, in their thousands of tons, had continued to sleep undisturbed in their godowns.

And yet this was the moment, Walter knew in his heart, to adopt some resolute plan, perhaps to conscript a labour force of one’s own by closing down other aspects of the business, certain of which would soon close down anyway of their own accord, by transferring estate labour (such of it as had not yet been overrun by the advancing Japanese) to the docks, by offering double wages if necessary, anything provided that rubber was shifted. It was no good for Walter, isolated and overworked as he was, to tell himself that he must not let that rubber get out of proportion … What was it compared to the rubber which had passed through his hands in his time? Nothing! … It seemed to him like a tumour, disfiguring his career in Singapore. And like a tumour it continued to grow because, although diminished in quantity by the Japanese advance and by the increasingly chaotic state of the roads in Johore, new consignments of rubber continued to arrive from across the Causeway.

The fact was that all the options Walter considered were hedged around with administrative difficulties through which he could see no way. In desperation he even considered, though only for a moment, the possibility of forming a co-operative labour force with other firms in a similar, if less acute, predicament … perhaps even with Langfield and Bowser. But that solution, which was probably the only one capable of realization in practice, was denied to Walter by the competitive habits of a lifetime. He could hardly enter into such an agreement without revealing the sheer size of his stocks to his rivals, who would know immediately by the amount of rubber he had waiting that he had made a grotesque miscalculation. To go cap in hand to old Solomon Langfield in Blackett and Webb’s jubilee year to propose such a scheme was more than he could bring himself to do. But at this point fate, in the shape of a Japanese bomb, took a hand.

51

Even taking into account the new-found amity between the two families, you would hardly have expected to see what you now did see at the Blacketts’ house, the extraordinary spectacle of lions lying down with lambs and scarcely even licking their lips. Walter found himself sitting at his own dining-table surrounded, it seemed, by nothing but Langfields. Even more unexpected was the fact that a similar scene had taken place yesterday and would take place again tomorrow … though with the women-folk subtracted, for this was the eve of their departure for Australia. What then was the explanation? For this was not, needless to say, the company that Walter would have chosen for his evening meal, including as it did, old Solomon Langfield with a slightly condescending expression on his cunning old face and young Nigel, who looked almost human by comparison, sitting next to Joan.

The Langfields on the whole looked subdued, which Walter found reasonably gratifying. Nor was this simply because their family was about to be sundered. The Langfields had suffered a misfortune. A bomb jettisoned at random by a Japanese plane had fallen in Nassim Road, partly destroying their house. None of them had been hurt, fortunately, except for a few scratches. Since the damage had only been to property Walter had felt himself permitted at first to treat the matter as a joke. At the Club, chuckling, he had entertained his friends with what he claimed was an eye-witness description of ‘the bomb on the bear-garden’. The rats and cockroaches that had poured out of the smoking ruins had been nobody’s business! And poor oldSolomon wandering about howling with grief. Why? Because he kept his money under his mattress, as everyone knew, and it had been blown up with the rest of the bear-garden! After a while, however, Walter fell silent, having realized that some of his audience were not relishing his joke at Langfield’s expense quite as much as he did himself. But Walter was fundamentally a kind-hearted man and he could see that, after all, having your house destroyed could have its unpleasant side. And so he had generously made amends by inviting the Langfields to stay at his house until they had managed to re-establish themselves in their own; besides, since the women-folk were going off together it made sense for the two families to be under the same roof for a while. Walter was considered at the Singapore Club to have emerged, after a shaky start, very creditably from the Langfields’ misfortune, given the legendary antipathy between the two families.

Solomon, as it happened, was not looking particularly well. He was getting on in years and had reached the age when a person finds it hard to adjust to a sudden shock like the destruction of his house. Mrs Langfield had confided in Mrs Blackett (the two ladies, having swallowed the distaste of years in a few minutes, had discovered that they had everything in common and had quite as much gossip backed up over the years as Walter had rubber in his warehouses) that it had taken some time for the poor old fellow to be coaxed out of the ruins. He had wanted to stay on there, it appeared! With ceilings which might collapse at any moment! And when he had been told of the invitation to the Blacketts’ he had grown more stubborn than ever. In the end Nigel had had to accept the invitation on his behalf and Dr Brownley had had to make a personal visit to the shattered house in Nassim Road to dislodge the old boy.

Dr Brownley, seated opposite old Solomon, might well have been thinking that the old man’s face had an unhealthy cast, yellowish with brightly flushed patches. But as a matter of fact he was concentrating more on his supper which was exceptionally appetizing. Walter, drumming absently on the table with a crust of ‘health bread’, for to the indignation of Tanglin the Cold Storage had stopped baking white bread on Government orders, surveyed the table and reflected that tomorrow, when the women had sailed for Australia, he would at last have time to get down to some serious work. He would miss them, no doubt, but that could not be helped. Besides, there was always Joan.

At the end of the table Matthew had become involved in a heated discussion with Nigel, odd snatches of which reached Walter’s distracted ears … something about colonial policy during the Depression. Matthew, Walter had to admit, had turned out a disappointment. He had grown somewhat thinner during his weeks in Singapore but no less excitable and opinionated. Why, the other day he had even asserted that the European estates had swindled inarticulate native smallholders out of their share of Malaya’s rubber exports under the Restriction Scheme. And how, Walter had enquired with an ironical smile, did we manage to do that? How did we manage to do that when assessment was under Government control? The estates had managed to do it through their creature, the Controller of Rubber! By packing the committee formed to ‘advise’ him … that was to say, to give him instructions for whatever they wanted to be done so that he could apply the official stamp to them!

‘Don’t be an idiot!’

‘I’m not saying you did anything illegal, just that you used your influence to bend the rules in your favour. Isn’t that the way it’s always done? Come to think of it, that’s what my father and his cronies did in the rice trade in Rangoon all those years ago. I suppose that’s what business out here consists of.’

Walter had spoken sharply at this point. He was not ready to listen to Matthew saying anything against old Mr Webb who had been the very soul of recitude and one of the pillars of the Singapore community His was an example of honesty and industry which Matthew would do well to follow instead of … of … Walter had been about to say ‘carrying on with half-caste women’ but thought better of it at the last moment. He had heard reports that Matthew had been seen with Miss Chiang but did not want to bring the matter up until he was more sure of his ground, for it was out of the question for a Webb to be seen associating openly with a ‘stengah’, particularly in Blackett and Webb’s jubilee year. ‘… Instead of wasting your time,’ he had finished rather weakly. Matthew had abandoned the subject, looking depressed.

Matthew was now saying, ‘Far from doing anything to help our colonies foster their own native industries the Colonial Office sees to it that any which begin to develop are promptly scotched!’

‘Why should they do that?’ scoffed Nigel Langfield, under the approving eye of his elders. ‘I say, Mr Blackett, what d’you think, sir? Isn’t that just the nonsense that the Nationalists are always spouting?’

‘Why?’ demanded Matthew heatedly. ‘Because we want to sell our own goods. We don’t want competition from the natives: we want to keep them on the estates producing the raw materials we need.’

‘Absolute poppycock, old boy,’ chuckled Nigel. ‘Westminster has done a jolly great deal with grants to build up industry in the colonies.’

‘Grants, certainly … but what for? So that they could buy British capital equipment for bridges and railways. The only purpose of these grants was to deal with unemployment in Britain. Funds were produced so that the unfortunate colonies could buy equipment which they could ill afford and which was of dubious advantage to them, though it probably was to the advantage of the European businesses established in the colonies!’

Walter could not help glancing at old Solomon Langfield to see how he was responding to these unfortunate remarks. Ah, it was as he feared! On the man’s sickly face an expression of amazement and disgust had appeared. Glancing up swiftly the wily old fellow caught Walter’s eye before he had time to look away. Promptly his expression changed to one of sarcasm, even glee, as if to say: ‘So this is the sort of degenerate talk that goes on in the Blackett household … I might have known!’ But perhaps Walter had merely imagined that his old rival was gloating over him: a moment later Solomon had dropped his chin wearily to his plate once more. He really did look rather ill. Perhaps it was just as well that the doctor was at hand. Much as he detested the Langfields Walter did not particularly want one to die under his roof.

‘In Burma during the Depression there was such a high tax on matches that the natives started a flourishing local industry making cheap cigarette lighters. Guess what happened. The Government, disliking the loss of revenue, suppressed it by instituting heavy fines! Well, by an interesting coincidence the same thing happened in the Dutch East Indies. There, too, cheap cigarette lighters threatened the revenue from matches. But the Dutch allowed them to continue making the lighters on the grounds that it created employment. And the same goes for many other local industries, too … The result is that the Dutch East Indies now have a spinning industry and instead of importing sarongs they make their own. The same goes for soap, cigarettes and any number of other things. There’s even a native bank to finance native enterprises! And what have we been doing? We’ve seen to it that even basic things like nails still have to be imported from Britain!’

‘Oh, that’s all very well,’ blustered Nigel. ‘Anyone can quote isolated facts, but that just distorts the overall picture.’ And Nigel flushed, nettled by Matthew’s tone and conscious that he had not emerged from this arguement as well as he had hoped, particularly with the beautiful Joan Blackett sitting in silent judgement at his elbow. What a smasher she was! Nigel particularly liked the way the light fell on her curly hair, making it glow like … like …

‘Matthew doesn’t know anything, Nigel, about what things are really like here,’ said Joan suddenly and in such a bitter tone that even Nigel peered at her in surprise, delighted, however, that she should take his side.

Walter had been listening attentively to the exchange between the two young men at the end of the table. As he listened his face had darkened and the bristles on his spine had risen, causing his Lancashire cotton shirt and even the jacket of his linen suit to puff up into a hump. Distracted though she was by her imminent departure, Mrs Blackett had noticed the warning signs and held her breath, afraid lest her husband explode at any moment. But just as it had seemed that an explosion of rage was inevitable, Walter’s thoughts had abruptly been diverted into a more soothing channel by his daughter’s defence of Nigel. And so promising was this new channel that within a few moments those horrid bristles had subsided and were nestling peacefully once more flat against Walter’s coarse pink skin. Walter had begun to have ideas about young Nigel Langfield.

Walter had known Nigel since childhood; according to the general proposition that Langfields only became odious and unsuitable on reaching puberty, he had often been permitted to come as a child to play with Monty just as now Melanie came to play with Kate. And naturally, even after Nigel had made the change from acceptable tadpole to unacceptable frog, Walter had continued to see him here or there for they belonged, of course, to the same clubs and it was inevitable that the young man should crop up in Walter’s field of vision over the years carrying now a tennis racket, now a briefcase, Singapore being a very small world, after all. Nevertheless it was only now that the bombed-out Langfields had assembled under his roof that Walter was at last really able to form an opinion about the young man: on the whole he had been agreeably surprised. Nigel had the right ideas. He was not, like Monty, a wash-out. On the contrary, from what he had overheard passing between Nigel and his father the young man was already active in the affairs of Langfield and Bowser. Walter, preoccupied though he was this evening with other matters, had not failed to notice that every now and again Nigel’s eyes would surreptitiously come to rest on Joan and contemplate her avidly. A young man’s normal stirrings of lust, perhaps? No, Walter did not think so. He believed that there might be more to it than that. For Nigel was making every effort to be agreeable to Joan and once or twice, for no apparent reason, a deep blush had stained the young man’s cheeks, which were, incidentally, still pleasantly freckled like those of a child.

Yes, Walter was still faced with the problem of finding a husband for Joan. How times had changed that he should now be giving serious consideration to an offspring of the Langfields! But a businessman must adapt his views to meet changing times; otherwise he will be left high and dry. Walter had not forgotten (how often had he not repeated it to little Monty when the lad was still in the nursery) the fate of the rice-millers in London who had gone to their doom because they had been unable to foresee the effects that the opening of the Suez Canal would have on their trade. A man must move with the times. If a union of the Blacketts and the Langfields was what the times called for, then so be it. Moreover, the more Walter thought about it, the more it seemed to him that this might be the master-stroke that solved all his problems simultaneously. If the two firms were merged into a new company, Blackett, Webb and Langfield, then the danger that Matthew Webb might one day use his holdings to force some independent, hare-brained, moralistic policy on the Blackett interest would automatically disappear. Matthew’s stake would be diluted. Of course, he would have the problem of imposing his will on the Langfield interest but old Solomon would not last for ever and Walter was confident that with Joan’s help he could deal easily enough with young Nigel. Why, a union of the two families might even help him solve the more immediate problem of shipping his rubber by putting him in a better position to suggest some joint solution of the difficulty to Solomon.

Mr Webb would not have approved of such a match as Walter was now contemplating. But no matter, Walter thought with a grim chuckle, old Webb was dead and from the grave a man’s influence on the board of directors is much reduced. Nor would his wife approve … but tomorrow Sylvia would be on her way to Australia. As for Monty, trained to detest Langfields the way a police-dog is trained to leap for the throats of burglars, he might not like it but then his opinion was of no account. For a moment Walter’s eye rested sadly on his only son. Why could he not have turned out like one of Harvey Firestone’s boys? As if aware of his father’s disappointment Monty looked up at that moment. ‘What’s biting the old man?’ he wondered. ‘Perhaps there’s something he wants me to do?’ But the next moment his thoughts had returned to browse on his own problems which, like his father’s, were manifold. How was he to get out of this hole, Singapore, with his skin in one piece? And, a more immediate problem, how was he to get through another dreary evening when he had seen almost every film in town? The only one poor Monty had not seen was Myrna Loy in Third Finger, Left Hand. Could you beat it! That was certain to be the sort of romantic rubbish to which he would normally have given a wide berth. But if that’s all there was then there was nothing else he could do. He would have to put up with it. ‘Third Finger, Left Hand indeed!’ he thought grimly as he tackled his pudding. ‘Why am I being punished like this?’

52

‘A businessman must move with the times!’ Two hours had passed and calm had descended on the Blacketts’ household once more, but Walter’s train of thought had not made much progress. Now he and Solomon Langfield and the doctor sat on the unlit verandah smoking cigars; upstairs, after an abortive attempt to be allowed to stay up late on this their last night in Singapore, Kate and Melanie were lying almost naked on their beds complaining of the heat and calling each other ‘darling’ in affected tones: Melanie was still hoping to be rescued from this early banishment by an air-raid and planned to cause a sensation, if the Japanese obliged, by appearing in the Blacketts’ improvised shelter wearing no more clothes than she was at present. Kate was less unhappy than she had expected to be at the prospect of leaving, partly because her father had agreed after a great deal of persuasion that her beloved cat, Ming Toy, might accompany her to Australia. Mrs Langfield and Mrs Blackett had both retired early. Matthew, after murmuring his goodbyes to the ladies (only Kate had shed a tear at parting from the Human Bean), had made himself scarce. Joan and Nigel had wandered into the garden and were sitting by the swimming pool watching the moon sliding gently this way and that on its dark skin.

Walter was pondering the question of palm-oil as he had done time and again in recent weeks. Palm-oil was plainly a business for the future. It was also, all too plainly, one in which he had allowed Blackett and Webb to get left behind. Other matters had obtruded, preventing him from taking the decisive action that was needed: old Webb’s illness, the war, worries about young Webb’s holdings in the company … and before all that there had been the Depression and its aftermath, the struggle for a Restriction Scheme and heaven knew what else. But while he had been hesitating what had happened? Guthries had been going from strength to strength with their new oil bulking company. Even the French had been at it, with Socfin (La Société Financière des Caoutchoucs) building a bulk shipment plant at Port Swettenham. Why, he had heard that Guthries now had twenty thousand acres under oil palms! To make the matter more galling, it seemed that Malayan palm-oil was considered superior to West African. One day, for all Walter knew, it might beacome as important as rubber … or more so, if synthetic rubber developed. Then where would Blackett and Webb be?

Walter had been aware of all this for years, of course. It was useless to pretend otherwise. Younger, he might have taken the plunge, built a modern oil mill and bulk shipment plant, negotiated for estates. It was absurd to think you could compete by shipping the stuff in wooden barrels in this day and age; it would take a considerable investment. It was the sort of venture that might be undertaken, perhaps, by a firm as large as Blackett’s and Langfield’s combined. Walter was profoundly depressed by the thought that a good fifteen years had gone by since Guthries had gone heavily into palm-oil. In that time he had done nothing! There was one consolation, at least as far as Socfin were concerned: Port Swettenham must be in Japanese hands by now.

Dr Brownley stood up to take his leave, murmuring that one of these days Walter must…

‘Yes, yes,’ muttered Walter impatiently, anxious for the Doctor to leave without delay. There was a matter he wanted to discuss with Solomon Langfield. Discountenanced by the briskness of Walter’s goodbyes, the Doctor retreated. Walter was left alone in the semi-darkness of the verandah with his old rival of many years.

‘Well, Solomon,’ he began cautiously, ‘these are troubled times for Singapore and I have a feeling that things will never again be quite the way they used to be in the old days.’ A grunt of assent came from the figure in the cane chair beside him. Encouraged, Walter went on: ‘Soon it will be time for another generation to take over from us the building of this Colony. But still, I think we’ve done our bit, people like you and me … and my sorely missed partner, Webb, of course.’ He added as an afterthought: ‘… And poor old Bowser, too, we mustn’t forget him.’ Walter considered it generous of himself to include the incompetent, drunken Bowser and the crafty, even criminal Langfield among the founders of modern Singapore. All the same, he waited rather anxiously for Solomon’s response which, when it came, was another grunt, somewhat non-committal this time. On the darkened verandah Walter could see little but the glow of his companion’s cigar tip on the arm of his chair and a faint gleam of moonlight on the bald pate as it curved up to the long sagacious forehead where preposterous eyebrows rose like puffs of steam.

‘I must say that it reassures me when I think that our work here will be in good hands when our youngsters take over from us. Mind you, my boy, Monty, has never been as interested in the business as I would have hoped … not his line but, well, fair enough, we all have our rôle to play and he’s more of … I suppose you’d say he was more of an academic turn of mind,’ proceeded Walter, fumbling rather. ‘But my girl, Joan, now, she’s as hard-headed as they come and one day she’ll make a fine businesswoman. Why, she could buy and sell her old papa already!’

A faint snicker greeted this remark and Walter paused, disconcerted. Had he imagined a sarcastic note to it, as if one were to say: ‘Well, that wouldn’t be difficult!’

‘Yes,’ he continued, summing up, ‘I don’t think we need worry about those who come after.’ And he added, almost as an afterthought: ‘Young Nigel, he’s a fine lad, too. I like the cut of his jib, I must say. Too bad there aren’t more like him coming out East these days … Someone at the Club the other day, just forget who it was, said to me: “Look here, Blackett, why don’t you and Langfield marry that young pair off? That’d give Guthries and Sime Darby something to think about! And by Jove, you know, he wasn’t far wide of the mark either when you come to think about it.’

A faint, enigmatic chortle greeted this last observation, followed by silence.

‘Well, Solomon,’ Walter ventured presently. ‘What would you think of such an arrangement if the interested parties liked the sound of it? There need be no great changes on the business side during our lifetime, of course. Frankly, I think we could both do a lot worse. What d’you think?’

Now at last, after being immobile for so long that it might have been taken merely for a piece of furniture, the passive silhouette beside Walter began to move, to struggle to its feet with a creaking and shrieking of bamboo, accompanied by a most peculiar gasping sound which it took him a little time to recognize as laughter. At length, however, the wheezing and gasping died away. By now Langfield was on his feet in front of Walter and bobbing up and down. Again it took Walter a few moments before he realized what the dimly perceived figure was doing. Then it was suddenly clear: the old codger was executing an insulting little caper in front of him.

‘So you’re having trouble getting rid of her, are you, Blackett?’ he crowed. ‘Well, no son of mine would look at her in a hundred years. Never! Not if you gave him half Singapore with her! Ah, that’s a good one … That’s the best I’ve heard for years … Ha! ha! … Your daughter and my son! He wouldn’t look at her! Ha!’ Solomon had paused in the half-open door which led back into the house and his old monkey’s face, illuminated by a glow from within, was twisted with hideous glee. ‘Good night, Blackett. Why, that’s the best I’ve heard for years! You’ve made my day.’

The door slammed. Walter was left alone on the verandah but he could still hear Langfield’s footsteps departing down the corridor. Then, from somewhere deep inside the house, faintly, a querulous voice cried out: ‘He wouldn’t touch the bitch! Never! Never!’ A burst of frenzied laughter and all was quiet.

Not far away, in another and less elegant part of the city, Matthew was sitting on Vera’s bed, apparently about to begin his second meal of the evening. For the past week Vera had issued repeated promises that she would one day cook him a meal, ignoring his protests that he was managing perfectly well for food already. Now here was the promised meal, balanced on his lap, and there seemed to be no option but to go ahead and eat it. He peered at what lay on the plate which was by no means easy to identify in the dim light of the oil-lamp. He proded it suspiciously. ‘What is it?’

‘Baked beans.’

‘I can see they’re baked beans. But what are these two lumps of slippery stuff?’

‘Chicken blood … a Chinese delicacy. Taste. You’ll like it very much, Matthew, I know.’

‘And these two other lumps covered in sauce?’

‘They are other Chinese delicacy … They are white mice, poached Chinese-style. Taste. They are very good.’

‘I’m not frightfully hungry, as a matter of fact. I’ve had one meal already this evening … But I’m really looking forward to tasting all this,’ he added hastily as Vera looked hurt, ‘even if I don’t quite manage to finish it all.’ He captured a baked bean with his chopsticks and nibbled it cautiously.

‘Oh, Matthew, you don’t think I am a good cook, do you?’

‘Of course I do,’ protested Matthew, and in a fit of bravado lifted one of the white mice to his lips and began to gnaw at it, making appreciative sounds. He found that it did not taste too bad, but would have liked to have known which end of the mouse he was eating.

‘You think Miss Blackett is better cook than I,’ Vera said accusingly. ‘I don’t know how you can touch a European woman like Miss Blackett, they sweat so much. It is something horrible!’

‘But…’

‘Yes, you prefer making love-making to Miss Blackett even though she sweats something horrible.’

‘Don’t be silly. You say that just because I’m not hungry when you cook me a meal! You know I only like to be with you. Come and sit beside me.’ Putting the plate down, he murmured : ‘I’ll finish the rest later.’

‘I know you think I am not a good cook but my mother could not teach me. Always she was used to servants here, servants there, because she was a princess. It is because my family has blue blood that I do not know how to cook.’

‘But Vera, I think …’

She had come to sit beside him and now put her hand over his mouth and said: ‘If we stay together I’ll learn to be a good cook so that you can invite your friends and we will have a nice time.’

‘I don’t have any friends, except Major Archer and Dupigny … and, of course, Jim Ehrendorf, but I don’t know where he is.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Soon I shall have to be going, Vera. I’m expected on duty tonight.’

‘Not just yet. Lie here with me a little while. “With so much quarrelling and so few kisses, how long do you think our love can last?” That is what it says in the Chinese song translated into English by Mr Waley. Shall I read you another verse? But first take off your clothes and lie down beside me.’

‘Mrs Blackett and Kate are leaving for Australia tomorrow … and I hear that lots of other women are leaving, too. Tomorrow we must try to arrange for you to leave, too. It isn’t safe for you to stay in Singapore with the Japanese so close.’

All night I could not sleep
Because of the moonlight on my bed.
I kept hearing a voice calling;
Out of nowhere, Nothing answered ‘yes’.

Matthew lay there inert, listening to the faint sounds which came from the other cubicles in the tenement and from outside in the street, above all, like the very rhythm of poverty and despair, that weary, tubercular coughing which never ceased. ‘Tomorrow, d’you hear me?’

I will carry my coat and not put on my belt;
With unpainted eyebrows I will stand at the front window.
My tiresome petticoat keeps on flapping about;
If it opens a little, I shall blame the spring wind.

‘What will become of us?’ Matthew wondered, thinking how vulnerable they both were, lying there in the stifling cubicle and breathing that strange smell that hung everywhere in Chinatown, that odour of drains and burnings rags. And how strange it was that someone should have made up these verses, which he found extraordinarily moving, hundreds of years ago and yet they sounded as new and fresh as if they had been composed by someone who had been here in this cubicle only a moment earlier. And that this person should have belonged to a quite different culture from his own made it seem even more moving. And slowly a peculiar feeling stole over Matthew, almost like a premonition of disaster. All the different matters, both in his own personal life and outside it, which had preoccupied him in the past few weeks and even years, his relationship with his father and the history of Blackett and Webb, the time he had spent in Oxford and in Geneva, his friendship with Ehrendorf and with Vera and with the Major, his arguments about the League and even the one about colonial policy which he had had earlier in the evening with Nigel, and yes even his saying goodbye to dear little Kate … all these things now seemed to cling together, to belong to each other and to have a direction and an impetus towards destruction which it was impossible to resist.

I heard my love was going to Yang-chou
And went with him as far as Ch’u-shan.
For a moment when you held me fast in your outstretched arms
I thought the river stood still and did not flow.

‘Vera, listen to me. We must make arrangements for you to leave, and no later than tomorrow.’