The Empire Trilogy (145 page)

But the Major did not want to hurt the old man's feelings: he had clearly put in a lot of work on his Zeppelins. Alarmed by Dupigny's sombre predictions of a Japanese advance to the south the Major had formed the Committee some weeks earlier with the idea of putting pressure on the arrogant, inert administration of the Colony to do something about civil defence. A gathering of influential citizens was what he had had in mind, but in the event he had only been able to conscript a handful of retired planters and businessmen, one or two Chinese merchants who agreed with everything but kept their own counsel and an argumentative young man from the Indian Protection Agency who disagreed with everything and, fortunately, seldom put in an appearance: at the moment he was several
stengahs
the worse for wear in the bar downstairs.

The truth was, and even now listening to Mr Bridges (the Zeppelins had moved off, giving place to some curious information about the angle at which bombs dropped from various heights arrived on the earth) the Major was reluctant to face it, they were making no headway. At best the Committee provided a weekly airing for a number of elderly gentlemen who otherwise would not get out of their bungalows very often. The Major himself had been responsible for such positive initiatives as had been taken. At his own expense he had put advertisements in the
Straits Times
and
Tribune
calling for assistance from the general public. The response had been disappointing.

A Chinese company had tried to sell him a stirrup-pump, ‘approved by ARP Singapore and now on show at ARP headquarters, Old Supreme Court Building, Singapore'. There had also been a long, mysteriously defensive letter from the sales manager of a firm manufacturing a patent rake-and-shovel for scooping up blazing incendiary bombs. It was
not true
, declared this letter, as had been stated ‘in certain quarters' that, when tested, the incendiary bomb had burned a hole in the shovel. In most conditions this would not occur. It was the opinion of the sales manager that the people testing the shovel had used the wrong kind of incendiary bomb.

The other two replies had also had a commercial flavour, embroidering prettily on the initials ARP. One of them, addressed to Mrs Brenda Archer, urged him to Appear Rosy and Pretty under all conditions. ‘War is horrible but preserve your composure and don't look terrible. Keep your colour by using Evelyn Astrova Face Powder.' Finally, a printed circular in a similar vein suggested that ‘A Reassuring Packet of what is now a very popular brand, Gold Bird (Ceylon) Tea, will soothe and refresh you in your worried moments.' To sell people things, reflected the Major, is all very well, nothing in the least wrong with it (does nothing but good when you come to think of it and one might even say, as Walter did, that but for commerce Singapore would hardly have existed at all), but this commercial spirit needed to be leavened by patriotism and an interest in the community as a whole. For if Malaya were nothing more than a vast congeries of competing self-interests what chance would it have against a homogeneous nation like Japan?

Of course, there were patriots here, too, and in plenty. At this very moment Mr Bridges had paused again to pay tribute to ‘the brave lads in khaki who had come from the four corners of the Earth to defend Malaya'. (‘Hear! hear!') The trouble was that for the British this patriotism was operating at long distance: their real concern was not for Malaya but for a country several thousand miles away. As for the Indians and Chinese, the great majority of them felt more loyalty to their communities in India and China than to Malaya: they had, after all, simply come here to find work, not to die for the place. Moreover, Malaya's population, already divided by race and religion, was even further divided by differing political beliefs. Walter Blackett, the Major knew, was concerned by the existence of clandestine Communist groups in his enormous labour force. Where the Government was concerned, anxiety about the allegiance of the Chinese and of their various ‘national salvation' organizations was chronic.

A few weeks earlier the Major had been summoned by some official to the Chinese Protectorate on Havelock Road and shown a list of patriotic Chinese associations believed to be under Communist control. But, he had wanted to know, what had these alarming associations to do with his own gentlemanly Civil Defence Committee, which was never likely to cross the path, at least he hoped not, of, for example, the ‘Youth Blood and Iron Traitor-Exterminating Corps'? Blinking rapidly the official had replied that, in his ‘humble opinion', the Malayan Communist Party would choose just such an innocent organization as the Major's for its subversive manoeuvres. The Major should know that Communists behaved in a society, particularly in a Chinese society, the way hookworm larvae behave in the human body, boring their way from one organ to another.

Startled by this image, the Major had looked at the official more closely: he was a bald young man with glasses, sweating profusely; in the draught of the fan thin wisps of hair flickered about his ears like sparks of electricity. He had said his name was Smith. The Major wondered whether this could be the same Smith who, Walter had told him, had incurred the wrath of old Mr Webb one day in Walter's office. The Major could not quite remember what it had been about…something to do with Miss Chiang, though. Perhaps he had made some disparaging remark about her, or about the Chinese generally, and Mr Webb had taken umbrage.

Yes, the young man had continued, they ignored what one considered to be the natural boundaries of the separate organs, passing through the skin into the blood-stream, migrating from the pulmonary capillaries into the air sacs, into the alveoli and bronchioles and thence, as adolescent worms, into the intestines where, developing a temporary mouth capsule, they attached themselves to the wall to suck blood, pumping it through their own horrible guts. And from time to time they would abandon the old site, which they had sucked dry … (
‘dry
, Major, d'you understand,
dry
…') … and attach themselves to a new and more nourishing location.

‘Steady on!' the Major had exclaimed, taken aback. ‘These blessed worms don't have anything to do with civil defence. Nor with Communists, for that matter.'

‘No, they don't,' agreed Smith calmly, but with the tufts of hair still flickering around his ears in a disturbing sort of way. ‘Speaking of worms I'm trying to make you aware of how these men…and women, too, Major, I believe you are friendly with a certain Miss Vera Chiang, are you not? Yes? I thought so … of how they pass from one organ to another in our society. Did you know that Stalin has recommended infiltration of Nationalist movements in his
Problems of Leninism
? Ah, I see you did not! Did you know that the Comintern had opened a Far Eastern Bureau in Shanghai, Major, not to mention the Sun Yat-sen University and the University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow? Perhaps some of your so innocent Chinese friends are graduates, Major, had you thought of that? Did you know that in 1925 the head of the Comintern, Zinoviev, declared that the road to world revolution lies through the East rather than the West … at a time, mind you, when the Chinese Communists and the Kuomintang were still working hand in glove? What more natural, when Chiang Kai-shek turned on his Communist friends in 1927 and destroyed their power, than that they should seek other and more innocent organizations such as yours to
worm
their way into? That is why I speak of worms, Major! You lack experience in such matters. You'd do much better to leave civil defence to the proper authority.'

‘If we had thought the Government was competent we wouldn't have considered it necessary to form the Committee in the first place!' the Major had retorted sharply, nettled by the young man's tone.

As it had turned out, he now reflected sadly, dropping a hand to soothe the Dalmatian again, for all the progress that had been made he might as well have taken Smith's advice. He had been faced at every turn by total indifference. But what, after all, could one expect of a society whose only culture and reason for existence was commercial self-interest? A society without traditions, without common beliefs or language, a melting-pot, certainly, but one in which the ingredients had failed to melt: what could one expect of such a place?

The Major now saw an opportunity for interrupting Mr Bridges again, and this time more successfully, by suggesting that the time had come for questions. From behind his chair there came a long, warbling howl of despair. The Major added swiftly that since there were no questions they would adjourn until the following week and, in the meantime, he would continue to press the administration for air-raid shelters in the populous quarters of the city and a proper distribution of gasmasks among the Asiatic communities. With that, he got to his feet, released the dog, and with a hasty goodbye made for the door. The emergency meeting had not been a success.

A clock somewhere was striking five o'clock as the Major's Lagonda turned to the right off Orchard Road on its way to the Tanglin Club. A few moments later the Major, followed by the dog, was making his way up the steps to the entrance. Here he unexpectedly came upon Dupigny, clad in billowing tennis flannels which the Major had no difficulty in recognizing as his own; moreover, it was the Major's old school tie which had been knotted around Dupigny's waist to serve as a belt. The Major's old school, Sandhall's, was not a famous establishment but the Major was attached to it, none the less, and it caused him a moment's distress to see his school colours wrapped like a boa-constrictor around a Frenchman's waist. But still, one must not make a fuss about trifles. This was war.

The Major continued to look preoccupied, though about something else, as he climbed the steps with the black and white dog trotting behind him, its tail waving back and forth like a metronome. At the top he paused and said: ‘Well, François, do we have to fear the Communists in Singapore?'

‘Until you have a government popular and democratical in Malaya, yes, you must fear them,' replied Dupigny after a moment's reflection. ‘Your Government here fears, naturally, an anti-colonial revolution if the Communists are allowed to operate freely. It is true, there is a risk. Thus, your dilemma can be stated so:
with
them in danger …
without
them, too weak to resist the Japanese!'

‘Oh, François!' The Major shook his head and sighed but did not pursue the matter. Instead he asked Dupigny if he had heard any further news of the Japanese attack. According to the communiqué issued that morning by GHQ the Japanese had tried to land at Kota Bahru in the extreme north-east of the country but had been driven off. But in the meantime Dupigny had spoken to someone who had attended another briefing: the few Japanese left on the beach were being heavily machine-gunned, he told the Major.

‘First we repel them. Then, though we have repelled them, they are on the beach and we are machine-gunning them!'

The Major shrugged and turned away, but continued to stand there for a moment, fingering his moustache gloomily. Dupigny surmised that he was exploring the worrying possibility of the Colony being attacked not only from the sea and the sky but also, as it were, being eaten away from within by a Communist Fifth Column. Beside him, sitting up straight, the dog looked worried, too, though no doubt only because his friend the Major was looking worried.

The predicament of the British in Malaya, mused Dupigny not without satisfaction, for like any good Frenchman he had suffered from the superior airs the British had given themselves since the fall of France, was strikingly similar in many ways to that which he himself and Catroux, his Governor-General, had had to face in Indo-China. How were they to make twenty-five million natives loyal to France and impermeable to enemy propaganda? Catroux, remembering that Lyautey, faced with the same problem in Morocco during the Great War, had solved it by practising what he had called
‘la politique du sourire'
, had resolved to do the same. Like Lyautey he had made it a rule that no one in authority should show the least sign of distress no matter how adversely the war might seem to be going. And so, Dupigny recalled smiling ruefully, their policy in Indo-China for the first few months of the war had been a display of nonchalance. Now, here in Singapore, the British had evidently decided on similar tactics to judge by their first cheerful communiqués.

Having invited Dupigny to attend the lecture he would presently deliver on ‘ARP and Pets', the Major passed on his way leaving Dupigny to wait for his partner in the Club tennis competition: this was Mrs Blackett's brother, Captain Charlie Tyrrell. Dupigny had decided for his own self-respect and for the prestige of France to win this competition, come what might. He had already discovered, however, that his partner was a serious impediment to this ambition. Charlie had been retained temporarily in Singapore to replace a staff officer who had gone sick. Alas, Dupigny had been deceived by Charlie's athletic appearance into choosing him to share the spoils of victory. Not only had Charlie proved to be a highly erratic tennis-player, the man could scarcely even be depended upon to put in an appearance when a match had been arranged. Only grim efforts on Dupigny's part had allowed them to reach the third round. Now their opponents, two polite young Englishmen, were already waiting for them on one of the courts.

But presently Charlie arrived, looking flustered and clutching an impressive armful of tennis rackets. ‘I say, I'm not late, am I?' he asked apprehensively. He was alarmed and dismayed by Dupigny's determination to win the competition, which seemed to him, at best, peculiar, at worst, deranged. And the further they advanced the more gravely unbalanced, it seemed to him, grew Dupigny's behaviour. Needless to say, he now regretted ever having agreed to become the fellow's partner. But with any luck they would be soundly beaten by the two sporting young men whom he could see waiting for them on a distant court beyond the swimming pool. On closer inspection their opponents both proved to have very blue eyes and hair glistening neatly with hair-oil. One of them stirred as they approached and called ‘Rough or smooth?', spinning his racket on the red clay.