The Empire Trilogy (186 page)

They slept side by side. Matthew was dreaming deeply, anxiously about Geneva. Things would go terribly wrong unless he was careful: he knew that Vera's life would be at stake unless he could persuade someone of something, whom and of what was not clear. He uttered a shout, waking himself up. But no, someone was there, hammering against the wall, telling him to wake up. He sat up immediately in the stifling darkness. He could see someone standing there in the faint glow from under the rolled-up bamboo window blinds, and he thought: ‘They
have
come to arrest her, after all.'

‘Sorry, I think you were having a nightmare,' said a familiar voice. It was the Major. He wanted to say that someone in the Control Room in Hill Street had told him that a Free French ship, the
Félix Roussel
, was due to sail for Bombay in a few hours and anyone who wanted to sail on her was advised to reserve a passage without delay. The P & O office was already besieged. There was no time to waste.

The following morning a cheerful crowd sat amid the jumble of mattresses and chairs in the Mayfair. Everything had at last been arranged. Matthew, jubilant, sat reading again and again the printed instructions they had been given at the P & O office. Vera was to report to Collyer Quay at eight o'clock that evening, bringing only what luggage she could carry herself. Matthew had been given a pass which would allow him to drive home after seeing her off, which would necessarily be after the curfew. As for Vera, though she smiled from time to time, she said nothing. Matthew was puzzled by her calm. Was she upset by the prospect of finding herself alone in Bombay?

‘A little,' Vera agreed. ‘But no, not really.' She had been used to this sort of thing from childhood, being uprooted from one place after another.

‘You've got the address of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, haven't you?' Matthew asked anxiously, not for the first time. ‘It's in Churchgate Street. I'll write to you there and join you when I can.' Vera smiled again and squeezed his hand. Matthew suspected that she still did not really believe she would get away from Singapore.

While they sat around talking they were startled by a whirring sound like a great bird passing over the house, followed by an explosion, perhaps a quarter of a mile away.

‘I didn't hear the sirens, did you?' They stared at each other in surprise. Only the Major knew immediately what had caused the explosion. He had heard that sort of noise before. He sighed but said nothing, bending his ear politely to listen to what his neighbour was saying. This man, a purple-faced planter from the Kuala Lumpur area, was one of the many refugees who had wandered in unannounced, having heard somewhere that there was shelter to be found at the Mayfair; he had brought several bottles of whisky with which he fortified himself at intervals, waving a roll of paper. On this roll of paper, he said, were the plans of a new type of anti-aircraft gun he had invented in the long evenings on his estate. It would fire twice as high as anything they had at present. He had written to General Percival about it but his letter had gone unanswered. ‘Save the whole of Singapore, old boy,' he was now explaining huskily to the Major. ‘But the blighters won't look at it… Save the British Empire, come to that!' And he waved his blueprint despondently.

Again there came that whirring, whistling sound, followed by another explosion, more distant this time.

‘What on earth is it?'

‘I'm afraid they've started shelling us now,' said the Major. ‘They must have moved up some heavier guns to reach this side of the Island.' He felt a sudden compulsion to jump to his feet and start walking about, because if you kept on the move … well, more than once in the trenches in the First War a shell had exploded where he had been sitting or standing a moment before. Nevertheless, he obliged himself to sit still, staring somewhat glassily at Matthew and Vera opposite him. He did not want to start all that again at his age! It had taken him years after the war to get over this compulsion to be always on the move. How many years had he not spent with invisible shells exploding in dining-rooms and drawing-rooms he had just vacated!

‘At this range they'll only be able to send over the small stuff,' he added, lighting his pipe.

‘The Major means that if you are lucky you will only be hit by a small shell,' observed Dupigny wryly from the doorway.

‘Ah, François! I suppose you know there's a French ship sailing tonight for Bombay? Will you be aboard?'

Dupigny shook his head. ‘I shall stay a little longer, I think.

‘This may be your last chance.'

Dupigny, however, merely shrugged.

‘I saw Walter a little while ago. He said that Joan and Nigel would be leaving tonight. They're to be married in Bombay and then go to Australia to join the others as soon as they can … Joan would have left the other day but could not get on the boat. It seems that …' The Major paused. Matthew, with his finger to his lips, was signalling in the direction of Ehrendorf who lay sprawled on a mattress at the far end of the room with a folded newspaper over his head.

‘What are you going to do about this poor fellow?' Matthew asked in order to change the subject.

Each shell that had exploded had produced a groan from beneath an elegant lacquered writing-desk which supported a field-telephone ‘for emergencies' which no one could get to work and an ordinary telephone, as well as several other things. Presently the author of the groan crept out and went to slump down under the Major's chair. With his refined sense of imminent danger The Human Condition had evidently sensed that these strange new explosions boded ill for his chances of survival.

‘I'm afraid I'll have to take him to the vet this evening. We may as well bring him along at the same time as you go to the boat, poor creature.' At these words The Human Condition rolled his eyeballs up to the Major's face and uttered a piteous whine, licking the Major's hand at the same time.

‘I think that dog must be rotting internally,' remarked Dupigny objectively.

Ehrendorf made his way, carrying a towel and swimming trunks, towards the Blacketts' compound, lingering for a moment among the exotic blooms which glowed like lamps amid the dark leaves. For a while he watched the butterflies which still swooped and fluttered in this little glade, impervious to the bombs that had fallen round about. Then, with a melancholy sigh which was partly counterfeit because he was now seeing himself as the ill-starred hero of his novel in its first version (innocent American abused by cynical Europeans), he moved on in the direction of the swimming pool.

Although he had paid a brief visit to Walter by darkness the other evening, it was several weeks since Ehrendorf had last seen the Blacketts' house by daylight. It seemed to him to have a forlorn and deserted air. During the raid on Tanglin a bomb had fallen at one edge of the lawn, uprooting the ‘flame of the forest' tree beneath which, several months ago, he had been standing with Joan when she had thrown wine in his face at the garden-party. No effort had been made to fill in the crater on whose raised lip the grass lawn continued peacefully to grow; in the façade of the house itself several of the windows which had once been glazed for the air-conditioning now gaped darkly where once they had sparkled with reflections from the pool.

He plodded past the tennis courts whose white lines, washed out by the monsoon rains and not repainted, were by now scarcely visible. Normally, too, there would have been several Tamils working in the flower-beds or cutting back the
lalang
but today he could not see a soul. He paused to stare uncomprehendingly at an untidy mass of broken spars and tattered paper which stood at the margin of the nutmeg grove and which he failed to recognize as the remains of damaged floats for the jubilee celebrations. Can Walter and Joan have left already? he wondered and, resigned though he already was to the fact that he was unlikely ever to see Joan again, he was nevertheless surprised by the intense and chilling sadness which suddenly enveloped him.

The summer-house, in which the Blacketts in happier times had invited their guests to change their clothes, remained undamaged; Ehrendorf changed rapidly and plunged into the pool which was full of dead leaves and other flotsam. He dived and swam under water for a few feet but the water was murky and disagreeable. How different everything was! Surfacing he bumped into a piece of floating wood on which the words ‘… in Prosperity' were written. He took a deep breath and dived again; this time he dragged himself on and on through the silent grey corridors, counting the grey tiles on the bottom, inspecting weird grey objects which lay there: a broken flowerpot from which still trailed a slimy grey plant which wavered slightly at his passage, a brick, a rusting metal golf club, a slimy, swollen, disintegrating grey head, horribly merry, which had once belonged to one of the floats and which he also failed to recognize. He would have liked to drag himself on and on through that grey world but his lungs insisted that he should return to the surface. Shaking the water out of his eyes he saw that Joan was walking rapidly towards the pool. Her face was flushed and agitated.

‘Oh, hiya. I hope you don't mind me using the pool. I didn't see anyone around. I thought you'd all gone.' He was aware of an extraordinary stiffness of the muscles of his face as he spoke.

Joan had stopped at the edge of the pool and was gazing down at him with an odd expression on her face, restlessly fingering the turban she was wearing. She ignored his greeting, turned away, looked at her watch, turned back to him. At last she said: ‘You must help me get to the boat. I've been trying to ring people but everyone else has gone. There's only Abdul here and he's too old … They say there's already a terrible traffic jam beginning … All the “boys” have cleared off, even the kitchen “boy”, and Father has gone off somewhere … and Monty, I don't know where he is … Nigel had to go and settle some business at the last moment and I'm to meet him at the boat but unless you help me … You see, they've all gone! Father was supposed to be back ages ago to take me down to the docks himself, but even the
syce
isn't there and it's getting late … Jim, I can't manage the luggage by myself, d'you see? Oh, go away! You're completely useless!' she screamed at Abdul suddenly for the elderly servant had followed her out on to the lawn and was rubbing his hands anxiously. Shocked, he fell back a few paces but continued to watch Joan.

Ehrendorf had turned over on to his back and was no longer looking at Joan but straight up at the sky which was cloudless though covered with a white haze. Floating with arms and legs outstretched he thought: ‘From above I must look as if I'm floating like a star-fish … or perhaps like a piece of flotsam.' In spite of the water bubbling in his ears he could still hear Joan's voice, though quite faintly now. He could tell from its pitch that she was panic-stricken. And this was the girl who had refused to help Matthew get Vera away! He said to himself, floating placidly: ‘I wouldn't help her even if my life depended upon it!'

When he turned over to swim to the side he could no longer hear her voice, but she was still there, kneeling in tears of rage at the side of the pool, hammering at it with a piece of broken wood. As he gripped the rounded lip of the pool and heaved himself out of the water he glanced at her, musing on the wonder of a beautiful woman with a disagreeable personality. Such a woman, he mused, was like a lovely schooner with a mad captain. The custodian of this lovely body was a hardhearted bitch. It was altogether astonishing.

‘Of course I'll help you,' he said. ‘Just wait a moment while I get changed.

Mr Wu's Buick, which had been under repair for some days, was now on the road again and heading towards Wilkie Street where The Human Condition was to be left at the vet's
en route
to Collyer's Quay. The dog sat on the front seat and stared out uneasily at the darkening streets. But when they reached Wilkie Street they found a large crowd of harrowed-looking people grasping dogs, cats and birds of all shapes and sizes already waiting. It seemed that these doomed creatures had sensed the anguish of their owners, too, for they were setting up the most distressing din of shrieking, whining, miaouwing, barking and piping. The Major had no appetite for this and said: ‘We'll call on the way back from the boat. There won't be anyone there after the curfew. Besides, we'd better not waste any time.' The Human Condition, who had been staring with dismay at this frantic queue of fellow-victims, uttered a heart-rending groan. For how long had he been reprieved?

When they reached Collyer's Quay they were thankful that they had not delayed any longer for already the quay itself and the surrounding area was jammed with cars full of anxious people. Holding the paper that Vera had been given at Cluny Matthew plunged into the crowd of people trying to get tickets and embarkation instructions. He was gone for a long time; meanwhile the traffic jam around them had worsened considerably. When he at last returned he had Vera's ticket but he was looking worried: he explained that they still had to drive to the P & O wharf some three miles away and the traffic by now was scarcely moving. To make matters worse, passengers were only allowed to board the ship in groups which had been staggered alphabetically in order to prevent everybody arriving at the dock at the same time. Because Vera's surname began with C this regulation should have worked to her advantage, but by some error the official who had taken her name, perhaps assuming that she had given her surname first in the Chinese fashion, had reversed her names and allotted her to the last group. In any case passengers were not arriving at intervals as had been expected and some of those who had arrived too early were being made to wait, blocking the quayside. Nevertheless, although the boarding arrangements were no longer achieving what had been expected of them and were, indeed, only adding to the confusion, they were still being rigidly adhered to by the authorities in charge of the embarkation.