Lady Battersby said in frigid tones, ‘Are you criticizing the Governor, Mrs Cotton?’
‘Not exactly. He’s very charming, of course, only I just feel it would be an advantage to have someone a bit more dynamic at the helm in these difficult times.’
‘Difficult times? What is difficult about them?’
‘Well, with the war in Europe and the Japs being such a threat to us.’
‘The European war is being dealt with very competently by our military experts at home. As for Malaya, our troops are standing to arms across the length and breadth of the peninsula and Singapore Island is a fortress. The Japanese are inferior beings, quite incapable of presenting any serious threat to us.’
‘But my husband thinks there’s a danger of them bombing Singapore. He says we should be building air raid shelters and digging trenches. Just in case.’
‘Really? May I ask how long you and your husband have been in the Far East, Mrs Cotton?’
‘About three years.’
‘Most of us have been here for a great deal longer than that. My husband and I have lived in Malaya for nearly thirty and I consider that we are in a rather better position to judge the situation. I might add that the Governor and his wife are personal friends of ours. We find him excellent in every respect.’
Mrs Cotton, flushed with embarrassment, mumbled her apologies.
Susan had enjoyed the exchange. Usually her mother’s ladies’ luncheons were ditchwater dull and she avoided them whenever possible. Lady B. had livened things up.
She listened to Mrs Jennings whose husband was something to do with surveying, grumbling about her cook who had, apparently, walked out on her without a moment’s notice.
‘Mind you,’ Mrs Jennings went on, ‘he was thoroughly lazy and dishonest, so I’m glad to be rid of him. You can never really trust any of the natives, can you?’
Amith was removing her plate as she spoke, his face expressionless.
Lady Battersby stared across the table. ‘We have never had the slightest trouble with any of our servants, Mrs Jennings. It all depends on how one treats them. Ours have been in our employ for many years.’
Three cheers for Lady B. for that put-down, Susan thought. The new mems like Mrs Jennings – probably from Surbiton – were always finding fault with their servants.
The lunch dragged on. At the pudding stage she excused herself with a headache and escaped. Her mother would be furious with her, but she didn’t care. Anyway, the headache was real after the evening with Denys.
She slept until nearly dinnertime, missing tea on the lawn, showered, dressed and went downstairs. There had been another monsoon downpour while she’d been asleep and the air felt beautifully fresh and cool. Her parents were having drinks out on the west verandah and her father had brought two men back for dinner. She had already met fat Mr Forster many times. He was also in the rubber business. His wife had gone to England, taking their son to school, and he was one of Singapore’s grass widowers – the tuans left alone consoling themselves with drink and native mistresses. The other man was unknown to her.
‘Lawrence Trent,’ he said, shaking her hand. ‘Your father and I met in England many years ago.’ He was a thin man with a beaky nose and sharp eyes.
Her father said, ‘Mr Trent arrived in Singapore recently. He’s a correspondent for a London newspaper.’
She gave him an arch smile. ‘Have you come to report on us?’
He smiled in return. ‘Something like that.’
Her mother said, ‘Do tell us all about London, Mr Trent. How are things there?’
‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mrs Roper, but I’m afraid I haven’t been in London for a long time. I’ve spent the past three years in China. In Shanghai and, lately, Chunking – being bombed by the Japanese.’
‘Goodness! You must find Singapore rather dull.’
‘On the contrary, I’m finding it fascinating.’
‘Really? In what way exactly?’
‘Well, it’s remarkable how calm and confident everyone appears. How completely certain of Singapore’s military strength. I’ve been very struck by that. It’s very different in China where nobody feels safe at all, and quite unique in the Far East as things are today.’
Mr Forster growled, ‘Of course we’re confident. The island’s like a fortress. Nobody’s going to get near us.’ His face was flushed as he drained the remains of what was probably his second or third four-finger stengah. ‘Damned Nips! I’d like to get my bare hands on them if they ever had the cheek to try anything on. Why the hell we let any of the bastards go on living in Singapore, I’ll never know. They ought to be rounded up and thrown out on their ears. Put in an open boat and sent back where they belong.’
Her father said soothingly, ‘Another drink, Bill?’ He signed to Soojal. ‘Tell me, how did that cricket match go today?’
‘We lost, dammit. By one wicket.’
‘Bad luck. Still, there’s always the next time.’
During dinner, the Japs weren’t mentioned again. Afterwards her mother went to bed early and her father took Mr Forster and Mr Trent out on to the verandah again where they would drink more stengahs or brandies and smoke and talk about politics and the economy and other equally boring subjects. Susan trailed upstairs. It was very hot in her room and she felt too wide awake to sleep, so she went out on the upper verandah and listened to the bullfrogs croaking and watched the fireflies flickering in the dark like Tinker Bell. Clap your hands if you believe in fairies. She’d always clapped loudly when Nana had read the story. Fairies, though, belonged to England – to English woods and English glades, not to tropical jungles. One thing in England’s favour.
After the rain, the scent of flowers was heavy and honey-sweet. Cigar smoke drifted up from the west verandah below and pipe smoke, which must belong to the newspaper man. She moved further along the rail and leaned over so that she could eavesdrop. Mr Forster was sounding off again about the Japs.
‘They don’t know the first thing about fighting. Weedy little types with rotten eyesight. Can’t see in the dark. Wouldn’t stand a chance against our chaps.’
Lawrence Trent’s voice said mildly, ‘That’s the general opinion, I know, but I’m afraid it’s rather a misconception. The Japs know how to fight very well – I’ve been on the receiving end myself – and I’d be very surprised if they weren’t being given special training for jungle warfare. Whereas our troops have received practically none.’
‘Rubbish! Our men are trained for anything.’
‘Not specifically for fighting in a jungle. The Japs have already learned how to exploit difficult terrain and climate extremes. And they’re infinitely adaptable. Their soldiers dress simply and can subsist on small rations they carry with them – not much more than a ball of rice and a canister of water. Supplying and deploying our troops is a much more complicated affair altogether … traditional uniform, large quantities of tinned food, and so on.’
‘Well, of course it is. Dammit, we’re not bloody orientals. Our men dress properly, eat proper rations and fight the better for it. And we’ve proper guns, too – we don’t just brandish knives.’
‘That’s another misconception. The Japanese are very well armed – with tommy guns and two-inch mortars. Light, mobile and very accurate. The British in Malaya have rifles and not many automatic weapons.’
‘Rifles are damned accurate too, I’ll have you know.’
‘True. But they’re chiefly a long-range weapon and there are not many extended fields of fire in somewhere like Malaya. In warfare the key to success is attack, and the jungle is far more conducive to attack than defence. An enemy can infiltrate unseen, especially if well camouflaged. It’s very hard to stop him.’
‘Sounds as though you’re on their bloody side, Trent.’
‘I’m not, I assure you. Anything but.’
Her father said, ‘I take it you’ve been on the peninsula, Lawrence?’
‘I’ve been everywhere they’ll
let me go, had a good snoop around and asked a lot of questions that nobody wants to answer. I’ve picked up some pretty shocking information in the process. Do you know that we haven’t one single tank in Malaya? Not one.’
‘Surely tanks wouldn’t be much good in this sort of country?’
‘Why not? They’re designed to go anywhere. I’m pretty sure the Japs will use them and we’ve no defences against them. If you think about it, there’s plenty of room for a tank to go between rows of rubber trees.’
Mr Forster was off again. ‘I’m telling you, Trent, the Nips aren’t going to get near Singapore. The navy has five fifteen-inch guns covering the sea approaches. Nothing and nobody’s going to get past those.’
‘I agree – so long as the Japs only try an attack by sea. But the guns are fixed in concrete, pointing seawards, and can’t be turned. If the enemy should come from another direction, they’d be quite useless. Just like the French Maginot Line against the Germans in 1940.’
‘What other direction? There isn’t another one.’
‘Unfortunately, there is. People refer to Singapore as an island but, strictly speaking, it isn’t an island at all.’
‘There’s water all the bloody way round it. I call that an island.’ Mr Forster’s face must be puce by now, his eyes bulging like the bullfrogs in the swamps.
‘In fact, it’s really just a continuation of the mainland, connected by a causeway across a very narrow strip of water. It’s by no means the impregnable fortress it’s cracked up to be. What if the Japs got ashore somewhere on the north of the peninsula, from Siam?’
‘What if they did? Our chaps would soon mop ’em up. Chuck ’em back in the sea.’
‘But supposing they managed to get a foothold and started to make their way down towards Singapore?’
‘Most of it’s jungle. They’d never get through. It’s bloody impassable.’
‘So everyone says, but, as I said, the Japs will learn how to deal with jungle and use it to their advantage. Nobody seems to understand the terrible danger Singapore is in – least of all our military. Officers put on their finery in the evenings and dance the night away with ladies in ballgowns, as though there were nothing whatever to worry about. It’s quite extraordinary to an outside observer like myself.’
There was a snort of rage. ‘You sound like that damned Yank on the wireless who keeps saying we’ve got it coming to us. I suppose you’ll be spinning the same story back in England – except they won’t put up with that sort of bloody defeatist talk. I can’t stand listening to this rubbish another minute, Tom. I’m off.’
‘I’ll see you out, Bill.’
She heard Mr Forster blundering off and the sound of his car starting up, engine roaring, tyres spinning. After a moment, her father came back.
‘Sorry about that, Lawrence. Poor old Bill can get rather steamed up about things, especially when he’s had a few.’
‘I’m sorry if I upset him. My apologies. Do you want me to leave too?’
‘Not at all. I’d like to talk some more. Were you serious about what you were saying?’
‘Deadly serious, Tom. The Japs aren’t fools. When they look at their maps they can see how strategically important Singapore Island is. Whoever holds it controls the main shipping route between Europe and Asia – the main link between the Indian and Pacific oceans: between East and West. It’s the pivot at the junction of trade routes. There are other routes but they’re either much longer or more difficult. And whoever holds Singapore also enjoys all the rich resources of Malaya and the Indies. Oil, tin, rubber, tea, coal, iron … with cheap labour thrown in for good measure. The Japs are desperate for raw materials, especially oil. Added to that, the Johore Straits form one of the best natural harbours in the south-west Pacific. They have to take Singapore away from us if they want to realize their dreams of expansion in Asia. Their aim and ambition is to be rid of white colonial races in South East Asia. To wipe them out.’
‘Not quite so simple for them, surely. We’re well defended here.’
‘You only think you are. There are endless official propaganda bulletins put out about army manoeuvres, naval exercises, troops arriving – all to make everyone feel nice and secure. Yes, there are some fixed defences on the mainland east-coast beaches where the Japanese army might be expected to attempt a landing – Kota Bahru, Kuantan and Mersing – and the big naval-base guns are covering the sea approaches to Singapore, but there are no fixed defences along the Malayan west coast, and Penang has precisely two six-inch guns. Incidentally, Singapore Island’s north shore has nothing at all to fend off any attack coming from across the Straits. No barricades, barbed wire, ditches, pillboxes, gun emplacements. Nothing. A contact of mine on General Percival’s staff tells me the general’s view is that to construct anything like that might have a bad effect on public morale.’
‘But that’s ridiculous.’
‘It’s more than ridiculous, it’s utter folly. Do you realize that the Royal Navy hasn’t a single battleship in this area, not one aircraft carrier and no heavy cruisers or submarines? All we have is a handful of destroyers and about a hundred RAF planes that are mostly obsolete – old Wildebeestes and Buffaloes and the like. Our army and the navy need good air cover and they simply haven’t got it. We’re dangerously vulnerable to attack. The Japs will know all this, of course. Their intelligence is bound to be excellent – after all, there are plenty of them living and working in Singapore. They’ll know all about the poor defences. They’ll know that there are almost no public shelters in the city, that practising air raid drills or blackouts or local defence isn’t taken very seriously, that most civilians are only thinking about the next party or the next cricket match or the next picnic on the beach. A lot of the whites have come out here to get rich quick and enjoy the life, never mind any other considerations. Nobody, including our military commanders, believes the Japs are capable of causing any serious trouble for us. The Nips are generally held in contempt, and that could prove fatal.’
There was a silence. Susan waited.
‘Surely the top brass must be aware of the situation.’
‘The consensus of top-brass opinion seems to be that the Japs are more concerned with fighting Russia, that they’d never attempt a landing in Malaya during the monsoon and that, even if they did, they’d never get through the jungle. None of those things is necessarily true. What is true is that when they took Indo-China in July the Japs gained an ideal base for launching attacks in all directions – the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Thailand and Malaya. But all the warning signals are being ignored: Jap submarines in Malayan coastal waters, increased Jap military activity in Indo-China … nobody seems very worried. Heads are firmly stuck in the sand. I’ve heard a rumour that two Royal Navy battleships are being sent out here but without an aircraft carrier to protect them, and one of them, the Repulse, is an old lady built in 1916. Too little has been done and it’s getting much too late.’
There was another silence before her father spoke again. ‘I’ve offered my services to the civil defence here but I must say it’s been something of a let-down. I speak the native languages pretty fluently and I hoped they’d put me to some good use but, so far, all I’ve done is fill in forms. The sort of thing any fool could do.’
‘There’s been a lot of that, I’m afraid: valuable men being wasted. And there’s another problem: Singapore’s a polyglot hotchpotch of races who don’t seem to mix with each other or have any special allegiance to the British Crown. I can’t see them pulling together under attack.’
‘Even so, Lawrence, I still can’t believe the Japs capable of taking Singapore.’
‘Let’s hope you’re proved right. But if you want my advice, Tom, you’ll send your wife and daughter away. Get them a passage on a ship sailing for Australia – they’d be reasonably safe there.’
‘They wouldn’t think much of the idea.’
‘Better than falling into Jap hands. They have a very uncivilized way o
f dealing with prisoners. And if they treat Europeans anything like the way they treated the Chinese in Nanking, it’s going to be very unpleasant indeed. Jap soldiers have been conditioned not to value any life except for that of the Emperor. They’re not troubled by a conscience and they’ll have no mercy.’
Another silence.
Her father said, ‘Well, thanks for the warning, Lawrence … I’ll certainly bear it in mind. How about another stengah?’
Susan stopped listening and went back to her room. The amah had put the mosquito netting in place and sprayed round with the Flit gun. She undressed and lay down on the bed, limbs draped over the bolster to keep cool. Lawrence Trent had seemed rather nice at first but he wasn’t. He was one of those people who took a delight in scare-mongering, and there were quite a few of them in Singapore. Her father would take no notice, so there was no need for panic. The idea of sailing off to Australia, of all places, was ridiculous. She’d say so at breakfast if it wouldn’t give away the fact that she’d eavesdropped.
Better than falling into Jap hands … they’ll have no mercy. No need to think about that because it would never happen.
A mosquito must have somehow escaped the Flit gun. She could hear it whining and dive-bombing the netting again and again, keeping her awake. She rearranged her legs round the bolster to get cooler and tried to ignore the maddening sound.
Four
ROGER CLARK WAS very sweet but it had been a mistake to encourage him. He took her to the cinema in the Cathay Building to see a rather boring film and to dinner afterwards at the restaurant above, which he probably couldn’t afford. During dinner he talked about Esher and his home in Esher Park Avenue. Apparently there was a pub called the Star on the green and another called the Bear in the High Street. There was also an Odeon cinema and a place called the Moor Place Hotel which was rather good for dinner. And a racecourse.
‘Sandown Park,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘I expect you’ve heard of it. It’s rather well known.’
The Other Side of Paradise Page 6