The Empire Trilogy (197 page)

When Matthew awoke day was breaking: the country round about was already suffused in a dismal grey light that reminded him of winter in England … with the difference that here it was sweltering hot still. While he had been asleep a lorry had parked a few yards away in the sparse shade of a grove of old, healed-up rubber trees. A British officer and an Australian corporal sat beside it, swigging alternately from a khaki water bottle. Matthew's thirst had revived with horrible and astonishing power now that he was awake and he could hardly avert his eyes from the water bottle. The corporal noticed and said: ‘You look as if you could do with a drink. Come and have some water for breakfast.'

Matthew took the water bottle and drank. He was so thirsty that he had to force himself to hand it back before he finished it. The officer's name was Major Williams. He said: ‘You look a mess, old boy. What have you done to your hands?' Matthew told him. He nodded sympathetically and said: ‘Come back with us and we'll get you a dressing.'

They climbed into the lorry's cabin and set off. Major Williams commanded a mixed battery of 3·7-inch heavy AA guns and 40-mm Bofors on the airfield at Kallang. He explained that the Japanese planes were at last flying low enough to be in range of the Bofors. Until the past week only the 3·7s had been able to get near them. He added: ‘We lost half a dozen men, though, in a single raid yesterday. It's not as if there are even any bloody planes left on the aerodrome. I don't know why they bother.' They drove on some way in silence, Matthew beginning to feel thirsty again.

‘None of this makes any sense to a chap like me,' Williams said after a while, gesturing at the rubble-strewn streets. ‘I used to work in an insurance company before the war.'

They had barely reached the aerodrome when a siren began to wail. The corporal, who was behind the wheel, accelerated down one of the supply roads, slamming to a stop some fifty yards short of the nearest gun emplacement: all three sprinted for cover. ‘We have ammo in the back,' the corporal said when he had recovered his breath. ‘It wouldn't do to be caught in the open sitting on that lot.'

Now, all around the aerodrome the guns began to thunder. A squadron of Japanese bombers was approaching. This was not a high altitude carpet-bombing raid; the planes were coming in low and had split up before reaching the target to confuse the ack-ack guns. A scene of frenzied activity confronted Matthew in the sandbagged emplacement where he now found himself. He had no idea what was happening and hung back, anxious not to get in the way of the frantically working gun crew. He gazed in wonder at the great 3·7-inch gun looming above him; its two enormous, tyred wheels rearing off the ground gave it the appearance of a prancing prehistoric monster, Meanwhile the range was read off on the predictor, shells were brought up, their fuses were set and they were stacked into the loading trays. At a little distance on either side an appalling shrieking and popping had begun as the Bofors guns poured their small, impact-fused shells into the sky at the rate of two a second. To this shrieking and popping was added the prodigious roar of the heavy guns and the crump of bombs that made the ground ripple beneath his feet.

Matthew had never seen a gun fired at such close quarters and was overcome by enthusiasm. ‘There's one, get it down!' he shouted, pointing and even climbing on to the sandbagged parapet in his excitement. ‘Here it comes!' But the gunners paid no attention to him. They worked on grimly, for the most part not even looking up at the sky. They seemed to be working in a daze, automatically. Their hands were blistered and in some cases as raw as Matthew's own. The sweat poured off them. Sometimes they staggered under the weight of the shells as they handed them up. ‘Magnificent! What splendid men!' thought Matthew, shouting and waving them on like a boat-race crew.

But now another bomber was clumsily droning towards them over the field, very low at no more than a few hundred feet, perhaps, coming from the direction of the river. Matthew leaped up again on to the parapet of sandbags and pointed, speechless with excitement, for evidently the gunners had not seen it. They continued to fire, not at this plane which lingered tantalizingly almost on their muzzle, but at some other aircraft which drifted miles above them and was scarcely to be seen through the canopy of smoke and cloud. Matthew, who did not know that the huge 3·7-inch would have been useless against a hedge-hopping plane, it was too slow (what you needed was a fast-swinging, rapid-firing gun like the Bofors, a glorified machine-gun), jumped up and down, almost having a fit. ‘Look at this one!' he cried in a frenzy and again he pointed at the bomber which was still crawling steadily and now rather menacingly towards them, barely skimming the row of wooden huts on the far side of the field.

‘Fire!' howled Matthew, gesticulating. ‘It'll get away. Oh, my God! Quick!' But the men continued to serve the gun not placidly, no, but steadily, grimly, and the gun continued to fire at the other plane, remote, maybe twenty thousand feet above them and no longer even visible but obscured once more by the canopy of smoke.

‘Can they be deaf?' groaned Matthew, looking, it seemed, into the very eyes of the oncoming bomber-pilot, and concluded that perhaps they were deaf as anyone would be, standing beside those guns all day. ‘This may be dangerous,' he thought, jumping down from the parapet. But his excitement was too much for him and he promptly sprang up again, to see the Bofors on each side of him firing over open sights at the plane which was now a mere hundred yards away. For a second the two streams of shells formed two sides of a triangle whose apex was the bomber itself. The glass cockpit suddenly vanished, as if vaporized. Matthew ducked involuntarily. A dark shadow covered him, like a lid on a pot. An appalling rush of air and a quaking of the ground, in complete silence, it seemed.

Matthew again jumped up, in time to see through the smoke the bomber departing peacefully over the flat, marshy ground in the direction of Geylang, but very low … and suddenly it seemed to trip on some obstruction, and then tumble head over heels with a tremendous explosion. Now it became several independent balls of fire that raced each other onwards over the flat ground burning brilliantly as they went and leaving the main hulk of the aircraft behind. Even the great noise this had caused had only reached Matthew faintly. The crew of the 3·7 had stopped firing, they were grinning, their mouths were working and they were waving their fists, Matthew swallowed and the sound suddenly came back. He, too, joined in the cheering. Around them all the guns had fallen silent for the moment. Williams appeared presently, having detailed one of his men to find Matthew a dressing. ‘I'm glad we got another one before we give up,' he remarked.

‘How d'you mean “before we give up”?' Matthew asked vaguely; he now felt shaken and disgusted with himself for having exulted over the death of the Japanese bomber-crew; even though they had presumably wanted to kill him and his companions it did not seem right to have allowed himself to get so excited.

‘The rumour is we'll surrender some time today.' Williams shrugged. ‘It can't be much longer, anyway. A few of us here are thinking of trying to make it to Sumatra by boat once the surrender is official. We've got hold of a motor-launch over by the Swimming Club on the other side of the field.' He gazed at Matthew sympathetically. ‘There's room for you if you care to join us.'

‘Could I bring a Chinese girl? She's on the Japanese blacklist.'

Williams nodded. ‘It might be a squeeze. The plan is to leave as soon after nine o'clock as possible if we surrender today. If not, then tomorrow.'

‘I may not be able to find her in time but I'll try. Don't wait for me if I'm not here.'

Presently Matthew set off on foot back towards the centre of the city but shortly after he had left the aerodrome gates he was given a lift by a taciturn young Scot driving a van. There was barely time for the vehicle to start moving, however, before there was the roar of an aero-engine overhead and bullets began to furrow the tarmacadam. A moment later the plane, a Zero, had overshot them, was climbing and turning. The driver accelerated and the van began to sway violently from side to side. Matthew craned out of the window, trying to follow the path of the plane as it circled round behind them.

‘Damn! He's coming back.'

The van screeched to a stop beside the Kallang bridge, slewing round in the road so that it was sideways on to the direction they had been going. Matthew and the driver plunged out, one on each side of the road. Matthew took cover in the doorway of a deserted shop-house and sank to the ground with his back against the wall, feeling sick and exhausted. The Zero came back. Another rattle of machine-gun fire and it zoomed over again. Then all was quiet for a while. Nothing moved on the road or on the bridge. There was no sign of the young Scot. Matthew continued to sit where he was, staring at the buildings across the road.

Beside the canal was the Firestone factory: a long, cream, concrete building with green windows which had a slight air of a cinema, perhaps because of the name ‘Firestone' in red gothic lettering attached to its façade. Matthew remembered now that Monty had pointed this building out to him on the evening he had first arrived. There had been some strike or other there. Some distance further along, sandwiched between the Gas Company gas-holder and the Nanyang Lights Company, was a bizarre little temple. Its outer wall was painted in red and white stripes and supported a multitude of strange, sculpted figures painted silver: a plump silver guru held up three fingers and gazed complacently back across the street at Matthew; beside him silver cows relaxed; the head of an elephant supported each gatepost while, on the arch above, a Buddha-like figure sat on a lotus flower and was saluted by two baby elephants with their trunks; on each side of the elephants, most curious, winged angels played violins and blew trumpets. Beyond, on the roof itself, an elephant-headed god rode a cow and a cobra rode a peacock. In front of the temple, like an offering, a dead man lay in the gutter under a buzzing, seething black shroud.

‘I must get us both on to that boat tonight, come what may,' he thought, longing to go home himself and forget the cruel sights he had seen. With an effort he forced himself to stand up and go in search of the young Scot and find out why he had not returned to the van.

The last position from which a defence of Singapore might have been successful had been lost but still the city had not surrendered.

On the previous day, Saturday, 14 February, General Percival had found himself at last having to wrestle with the problem he had been dreading for weeks: how long would it be possible to fight on. The water supply was on the verge of failing. On higher ground it had failed already. Drinking water especially was in short supply. Because of the damaged mains there were fires burning out of control on every hand. Twice he had visited Brigadier Simson at the Municipal Offices to inspect the figures for the city's water supply for the previous day: he had found that two-thirds of the water being pumped was running to waste and that the situation was getting rapidly worse.

This was clearly a matter which must be discussed with the Governor who had, in the meantime, moved out of the bomb-damaged Government House and had taken up residence in the Singapore Club. This meeting with the Governor had left a distressing impression on Percival's mind. Sir Shenton Thomas was alarmed by the prospect of a serious epidemic in the city. Why then did Percival still hesitate to surrender? Wavell, now back in Java, had made it plain that he was expected to fight on as long as possible, if necessary by fighting through the streets. Behind this reluctance of Wavell's to countenance surrender there was undoubtedly the voice of Churchill himself. On the other hand, surrender was clearly the only way in which the civilian population might be spared some great disaster, either from an epidemic or from the fighting.

It is distressing to have to act under the impulsive orders of someone who, in a situation which concerns you deeply, does not know what he is talking about. Percival, as a deeply loyal soldier, was sufficiently nimble to dodge the notion that Churchill, trying to tell him what was best at a distance of several thousand miles, was nothing but a blockhead who had, moreover, already committed his full share of blunders with respect to the Malayan campaign. But no sooner had Percival dodged this disloyal thought than he found himself having to elude the grasp of another, even more cruel conviction: namely, that the Governor now sitting opposite him
was not real
. Nor was it only the Governor who suffered this disability: his wife did, too, and his staff, and indeed, everyone here in the Singapore Club and, come to that, outside it. For it had suddenly dawned on Percival that he was the victim of a cruel and elaborate charade: that the moment he left the Governor's presence the fellow would cease to exist. Percival passed a hand over his brow and tried to collect himself. Could it really be that Churchill, Wavell, Gordon Bennett, even his own staff, had no real substance, that they were merely phantasms sent to test and torment him, incredibly lifelike but with no more reality than the flickering images one saw on a cinema screen? Wherever he looked, yes, these deceptive images would spring up, but the instant he looked away again they would vanish. What evidence was there that they continued to exist when he was not looking at them? Why, he doubted whether the Governor, relying on the dignity of his office to deter Percival from touching him, even bothered to cloak himself with a tactile as well as visual semblance. He could probably poke a finger through him! For a moment, staring at the Governor suspiciously over the little table between them, Percival had an urge to experiment, an urge to reach out and grasp him by the throat. With an effort of will, however, he mastered himself and muttered: ‘While we still have water we must fight on. It is our duty.' But he continued to stare at the Governor until the latter grew uneasy.