The Empire Trilogy

by J. G. Farrell

  That night Percival dreamed not about the war but about an epidemic. ‘What has your epidemic got to do with me?’ he demanded indignantly. The Governor replied: ‘If you don’t understand, it’s not much use trying to explain.’ Then the Governor faded and Percival slept in peace for a while, until presently a little group of military advisers assembled round his bedside led by Hamley, author of The Operations of War Explained and Illustrated. They were less confident than they had been on previous nights, but nevertheless, recommended a bold stroke: the million people who now crowded into Singapore Town should arm themselves as best they could with whatever lay to hand and all charge simultaneously at the same point of the Japanese lines. When they had finished with one point they might turn to another, and so on until the Japanese were defeated. ‘An attack by a million people,’ declared Hamley pompously, ‘is not to be shrugged off lightly.’

  Now Sunday dawned, ominous, unbearably hot. Percival took communion and prayed fervently: he found it hard to masticate the wafer he was given: his mouth was too dry. However, his frame of mind was somewhat better. Only once, noticing the chaplain gaze at him with interest and compassion, did he find himself wondering whether this cleric had any other existence beyond the walk-on part of lending verisimilitude to his own Sunday devotions. He shrugged the thought off hastily. There would be time enough to worry about the existence of other people. The campaign was almost at an end.

  He had called a conference of all his commanders for nine-thirty a.m. Brigadier Simson now reported that a complete failure of the water supply was likely within twenty-four hours. In the light of this news there were only two possible courses of action. One was to counter-attack and recover the reservoirs and the food depots at Bukit Timah. The other was to surrender.

  It was agreed unanimously that there was no real alternative. The meeting was over within twenty minutes and Percival immediately set to work on the delicate and humiliating task of negotiating Singapore’s surrender. It was not until late in the afternoon that, after much difficulty, Percival found himself at the Ford factory, sitting opposite the Japanese Commander, General Yamashita. Although a cease-fire had already been ordered for four p.m. it was agreed that hostilities should officially cease at eight-thirty p.m. Yamashita conceded that his three fighting divisions should remain outside the city that night to prevent any disorder or excesses. At no point during this trying interview did General Yamashita seem anything but completely real to General Percival (only Torrance, his Chief of Staff, who sat on his right, occasionally dimmed like an electric light in a thunderstorm).

  This Sunday, then, was the last day of the defence of Singapore, the last day of freedom for the British who remained on the Island … almost, you might say with hindsight, the last day of the British Empire in these parts. It took time for news of the impending surrender to percolate through the stricken city, particularly since the bombing, strafing and shelling continued unabated all morning and afternoon. Matthew still had not heard the news as he struggled in the mid-day heat near the Firestone factory to get the body of a young Scot into the back of the van … as a matter of fact, by now he had lost count of the days and could not have told you that today was Sunday. Nor had the Major heard the news as, after a rather odd tiffin of tinned sardines and tinned pears, he and Captain Brown held a cut-rate auction of the remaining girls from the Poh Leung Kuk in the presence of the handful of bridegrooms he had persuaded to assemble, thanks to the good offices of Mr Wu. The bridegrooms were apathetic and uneasy and bidding was not brisk. But the Major comforted himself with the thought that to get them husbands of any description in the circumstances was not bad going. How would those girls who had declined to accept one or other of the Major’s bridegrooms fare during the inevitable Japanese occupation of Singapore? He suspected that some of them, to judge by the lipstick and nail-varnish that was beginning to reappear, might fare all too well.

  Matthew was now delivering the young Scot’s body to the General Hospital in Outram Road. It had taken an age to get the body into the van (a corpse is heavy and Matthew was weak) and it was two o’clock exactly as he reached the hospital. There, beside one of the paths leading up the slope to the main building, a mass grave had been dug. He looked up, afflicted by the sight of so many bodies laid out on the lawn for burial, and noticed the white clock tower above the portico of the main block with its four small, black clock faces. It came as a shock, somehow. The clock looked so peaceful nestling there beneath drooping classical garlands while on the ground below there was nothing to be seen but carnage and violent death. Two o’clock.

  Two, three hours passed in a dream. The guns had fallen silent at last and bombs ceased to fall on the city. At the Mayfair there was no sign of Vera. Matthew longed to lie down there and sleep but time was slipping away and he must find her soon if they were to escape that night. A little later, without remembering how he had got there, he found himself sitting on his heels and gazing down at the wall of the storm-drain that ran along Orchard Road; part of it had fallen in, revealing a great wedge of neatly packed pink bricks, like the roe of a gutted fish, each with the word Jurong neatly printed on its back.

  Later again he passed Dr Brownley scurrying along Battery Road in the direction of Whiteaways’: he called to him but the Doctor paid no attention. His eyes were shining, his pulse was racing, he suffered a painful, joyful constriction of his respiration. In his ears, instead of Matthew’s greeting, a celestial music sounded, while in his pocket rested $985·50 cents which in a moment he would be exchanging for the only true object of his desire, that article which had fixed him with its basilisk stare from Whiteaways’ window, whatever it was. Dr Brownley was flying as if to greet a lover (but let him pass on, for which of us is so poor in spirit that he has never experienced the delights of being united in bonds of ownership with a piece of merchandise?).

  Then Matthew, having wished the Doctor well under his breath, was standing in the cathedral grounds inspecting a collection of furniture that had been carried outside. The pews, he noticed, were made of solid wood, such as one might find in any English church, but with woven rush seats and backs as a concession to the tropics. Inside, a hospital had been improvised. The shuttered sides of the building stood open, as did another row of shutters just beneath the timbered roof. Rows of wounded had been laid on the brown stone flags beneath a couple of dozen silently revolving fans which hung from elbowed brackets along the aisle. Nearer to the altar, a number of men and women knelt in prayer, some of them in uniform. From a distance this scene, like that in the grounds of the General Hospital, appeared relatively peaceful. It seemed to Matthew that the human beings in it looked quite insignificant compared with the great building which rose above them. The fans, revolving like propellers some distance below the dim heights of the roof, gave him the restful impression that he was under water … It was only when he looked with more particular attention at the wounded on the floor that he realized that here, too, people lay shattered and dying. Shocked, he fell back, intending to continue his search somewhere else. But then, at last, he saw Vera working among the patients not far away.

  Vera saw him at almost the same moment. She hurried towards him but, at the last instant, hung back. He had thought at first that she was wearing a red and white dress. Now he saw that it was an overall and that she was soaked in blood from head to foot.

  ‘I know,’ she said immediately. ‘I’m going to change as soon as I can.’ She smiled at him then and burst into tears.

  They went outside for a moment. ‘D’you notice something odd?’ he asked suddenly. ‘There are no birds. They’ve all gone. That’s why it seems so quiet.’

  ‘Tell me where you’ll be later,’ Vera said. ‘I can’t talk to you now. I must go.’

  ‘I’ll come back here just after seven. There may be a boat leaving tonight which we could both take.’

  Vera borrowed his handkerchief, dried her eyes, smiled at him and hurried away. He retired a little way into the gro
unds but lingered for a while, watching her as she moved from one patient to another.

  Later, after lying down for some time on the cathedral lawn, he joined the crowds milling slowly about in Raffles Place. A strange hush had fallen over everything: in it the occasional crash or crackle of a fire not far away in Battery Road or Market Street could be clearly heard. People drifted, for the most part aimlessly, in and out of the shops that were still open, or simply stood about talking in little groups. Many people had suitcases or bundles, evidently refugees from up-country or from districts lying outside the British-held perimeter. There were a number of forlorn-looking children: some of them had been bedded down on the street or in doorways by their parents. There were a great many soldiers: some of them, in defiance of the supposed destruction of liquor, were drunk and belligerent.

  A dense crowd had gathered at the far end of Raffles Place in front of the Mercantile Bank. There, under a thick stone colonnade, someone was shouting. Matthew pressed forward into the crowd to see what was happening. A sculpted stone flame resembling an ice-cream cone twirled up over the grandiose entrance to the Mercantile Bank. Above that, two fluted, indigestible stone pillars supported four more twirled ice-cream cones set in dishes. It was beneath this important façade that a ragged British Tommy had chosen to address the crowd. Matthew strained to hear what he was saying.

  ‘A dirty capitalist war!’ he was shouting. ‘We’ve no reason to be here at all. Listen, mates, which of us gives a damn for the bleedin’ Chinese? Let ’em sort it out for themselves with the bloody Japs … What’s it to do with us? I’ll tell you what … It’s greedy profiteers in London, that’s what it is …’

  A drunken shout of approval rose from the troops packed together in front of this vociferous figure. There were jeers, too, and bitter laughter. Matthew muttered: ‘No, that’s all wrong …’ and tried to force his way through the mob. But now, abruptly, a fight flared up just beside him and in the sudden thrashing of fists and boots Matthew was shoved backwards and somebody’s elbow caught him a blow in the face. He fell and for a moment, dazed, was afraid that the crowd would surge over him before he could get up. He could still hear the Tommy ranting as he scrambled to his feet and worked his way round to the right by the Meyer Building, muttering to himself as he went.

  Now he had shoved his way in under the colonnade and was almost within reach of the table on which the soldier was standing, still declaiming wildly against the profiteers and their native henchmen. At this moment a missile, perhaps a bottle, hurled from the crowd, struck the speaker and he fell suddenly to his knees, crouching on the table like a wild animal, blood pouring from his temple. Matthew saw the glinting studs of his boots as he knelt there with his head between his knees. Then someone helped him off the table and Matthew immediately jumped up in his place, holding up his hand and shouting:

  ‘No! Don’t you see? Things don’t have to be like this … Please listen to me! It’s just a question of how we approach each other. People seem to think that self-interest … No, what I mean to say really … Wait! We’re no different from each other, after all! We don’t have to have … yes, I believe it, and one day we won’t! We won’t have them …! We shall live …!’ He tried to say more but a great wave of jeering and yelling surged forward from the crowd and his voice broke. ‘Oh, don’t you see, you’re playing their game …’ he muttered, gazing down in distress at the baying crowd in front of him until, a moment later, a bottle came winging end over end towards him and struck him a numbing blow in the ribs. He staggered back with a gasp. A hand gripped his arm firmly and dragged him off the table. He found himself looking at the grinning face of Dupigny.

  ‘François,’ he muttered. ‘What are you doing …?’

  ‘D’you want to get yourself killed?’ asked Dupigny. ‘Now is not the moment for such nonsense.’

  74

  At the Adelphi Hotel beside the cathedral someone had had the foresight to fill several baths before the water supply had failed. Although these baths had already been used by several people and the water in them had taken on a dark grey colour, both Matthew and Dupigny took advantage of them and were feeling distinctly refreshed as they emerged from the hotel into the twilight and crossed the road to the cathedral grounds. Dupigny himself had decided not to try to escape. He was too old, he had explained with a shrug, and besides ‘avec la Boche en France’ … He would stay and keep his friend the Major company during the internment which no doubt awaited them. He had agreed to drive Matthew and Vera to the boat waiting at Tanjong Rhu, however.

  A great crowd had gathered around the cathedral in the dusk, and seeing it Matthew began to feel anxious again, lest they should not be able to locate Vera. A service was in progress and these people standing in devout silence several deep around the building were those who had been unable to find room inside. As Matthew and Dupigny searched the fringes of this crowd the congregation began to sing:

  Praise, my soul, the King of

  To his feet thy tribute bring.

  Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven

  Who like me his praise should sing?

  Praise him! Praise him!

  Praise the everlasting King!

  Suddenly a young woman detached herself from the crowd and took Matthew’s arm. It was Vera. He gazed at her, smiling with relief, remembering how he had first seen her come up to him in the twilight at The Great World just like this.

  ‘Come,’ said Dupigny.

  It was very dark by the time they reached the aerodrome. They left the car near the entrance, having decided that in order not to attract attention it would be best to complete their journey on foot. It seemed to grow even darker, however, once they were on the airfield itself and they had to grope their way forward with the utmost caution to avoid bomb-craters and other obstacles. This wandering in the blackness seemed to take an age. Once, not far away, they saw a party of men with a powerful torch, also moving across the field. They crouched down and held their breath while the men went by, talking among themselves. It was impossible to tell what language they were speaking. The wavering light of the torch moved on for another hundred yards, then was switched off suddenly. A little later it was switched on again and some distance further away and played for a moment on the shattered barrel of a spiked anti-aircraft gun. Then the torch vanished once more. Matthew, Vera and Dupigny continued their laborious journey. At last they could hear the lapping of the water and a voice spoke to them quietly from the darkness. Matthew answered. It was Major Williams.

  ‘Glad you made it. There are some other people about so we’d better be quiet. They may be Japs or other escapers. You just got here in time, as a matter of fact, because we’re about ready to leave. The boat’s out here.’

  Ahead of them a shaded light appeared for a second or two on a gang-plank. Matthew glimpsed the Australian corporal he had seen that morning with Williams; behind him it was just possible to make out the shadow of a boat against the water. ‘Come along, the sooner we shove off the better.’

  Matthew and Vera said goodbye to Dupigny and they wished each other luck. They shook hands. Matthew and Vera crossed the gang-plank followed by Williams. Dupigny waited to help them cast off and was just stooping to do so when a powerful beam sprang out of the darkness and played over the launch, then fastened on Dupigny. The figures on the deck froze. The Australian corporal who was holding a lamp switched it on. It illuminated a ragged party of soldiers wearing Australian hats. One of them had a revolver, another a tommy-gun. There were about a dozen of them.

  ‘Sorry, sports, we’re taking the boat,’ the man with the torch on Dupigny said. ‘Hop it.’

  Nobody moved or spoke. Dupigny, however, reached down for the mooring-rope to cast off. There was a shot and he began to hop about like a wounded bird, clutching his leg.

  ‘Why don’t you find your own bloody boat?’ shouted the Australian corporal in a sudden rage.

  ‘Hop it. You, too, cobber.’

  ‘There’
s nothing for it, I’m afraid,’ said Williams. One by one they came back over the gang-plank.

  ‘Right now. Clear off and take him, too, before we do him in.’

  They picked up Dupigny who had now fallen over and was struggling to get up again. He said he was not badly hurt but Matthew and Williams had to take his arms over their shoulders and support him; one leg of his cotton drill trousers was already soaked in blood. Speechless with anger and frustration they made their way wearily back across the aerodrome in the darkness.

  From elsewhere on the Island other parties bent on escape were also groping about in the darkness. General Gordon Bennett found himself at the docks searching for a boat in which he might sail to Malacca in search of a bigger boat which in turn might carry him to Australia and freedom; he had thought it best not to mention his departure to the GOC and had left an inspiriting order for the Australian troops under his command to remain vigilantly at their posts … but in the meantime, where was that damn boat he needed?

  As for Walter, he was making his way along a quay at Telok Ayer Basin where the Nigel, a handsome motor-yacht, was waiting for him and his companion, W. J. Bowser-Barrington. Poor Bowser-Barrington had fallen some way behind and was gasping under the tarpaulin-wrapped burden he carried on his shoulders. Bowser-Barrington was feeling anything but pleased, for his intention had been that Walter should carry this burden which consisted of his deceased Chairman who, though not a heavy man, was not a light one either. Walter, however, had flatly refused to have anything to do with carrying old Solomon’s remains and had even gone so far as to recommend that Bowser-Barrington should simply throw his Chairman away somewhere. This, naturally, was altogether out of the question.

  ‘Well,’ thought Bowser-Barrington uneasily as he struggled along the quay in Walter’s wake, ‘once we’re out at sea I’ll show him who’s boss.’ Or rather … wait. Perhaps that was something he should discuss with the rest of the Board. Might it not be better to wait until they had reached Australia?