Torrance- Escape From Singapore

by Onbekend

  Kitty grabbed the Japanese by one arm and hoisted him to his feet. His dark glasses had fallen off and Torrance was shocked to see eyes as blue as his own mirrored in an Asian face. ‘And this charming fellow is Captain Yashiro of U-Kikan,’ said Kitty.

  ‘You know him?’ asked the sultan.

  ‘Only by reputation,’ said Kitty. ‘It’s a shame we have to leave him here. I’m sure there are all sorts of questions my superiors would love to ask him.’

  ‘You think you could make me talk?’ sneered Yashiro.

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ said Kitty. ‘It’s not often we manage to capture a Japanese alive: they usually kill themselves the first chance they get. But if you can take one alive, and keep him that way for a few days, by the end of the week he’s singing like Vera Lynn.’

  ‘Are you sure we should leave him?’ Torrance asked Kitty. ‘Ma’am?’ he added belatedly.

  ‘Getting back through the Japanese lines will be difficult enough as it is, I should imagine,’ she replied. ‘If we try to take him with us he’ll do everything in his power to slow us down, and betray us at the first opportunity.’

  ‘No, what I mean is… I ain’t formally accepted his surrender yet.’

  She frowned. ‘I’m not sure I follow you.’

  ‘You know what they say: dead men tell no tales.’

  ‘I hope you’re not suggesting we murder him in cold blood? That’s not very sporting, not to mention a gross breach of the Geneva Convention.’

  ‘War ain’t a sport, ma’am. If you ask me, that’s why the Japanese have kicked our… uh, backsides from Siam to Singapore: they ain’t playing by the same rules as us.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ agreed Kitty. ‘But do we even deserve to win, if we abandon our own principles so cheaply?’

  ‘It ain’t about deserving to win, ma’am. It’s about surviving.’

  Yashiro smirked. ‘You wish to survive? Surrender now, and I will be merciful. Certainly you’ll spend the rest of the war in a prisoner of war camp, but at least you’ll be safe.’

  ‘No ta, Tojo. I’ve been a prisoner of the Japs before. You’ll forgive me if I don’t accept your generous invitation this time.’

  ‘Then what will you do now? Take His Majesty here back to Singapore Town? Your countrymen are defeated. It can only be a matter of time before your General Percival understands he has no choice but to surrender.’ Yashiro shrugged. ‘Go, if you will. But I’ll lay odds you’ll find the Rising Sun flag flying over Fort Canning by the time you get back.’

  Torrance was relieved to hear someone calling him from outside, sparing him the necessity of having to think of a suitably witty response to Yashiro’s jibe. Stepping out onto the balcony, he saw Rossi and MacRae on the terrace below, looking up at the house. Rossi pointed towards the stable yard. ‘Nagarkar and those other Japs are marching up the drive.’

  Torrance beckoned for Kitty, the sultan and Irina to join him on the balcony, and indicated the terrace below. ‘Can you jump down there?’

  ‘I’m an old man, Corporal,’ said the sultan.

  Quinn pulled the sheets off the bed and emerged onto the balcony with them bundled in his arms. ‘What about if we made a rope out of these sheets?’ he suggested. ‘Could you climb down?’

  The sultan grimaced and shook his head.

  ‘What if Torrance and Quinn jumped down with the sheet, and then the four of them stretched it out between them and you jumped into it?’ suggested Kitty.

  Something gleamed in the sultan’s eye. ‘I saw that in a motion picture once. I have always wanted to try it.’

  ‘Now’s your chance.’ Torrance took the sheet from Quinn, threw it over the balcony, then cocked a leg over the railing and jumped down after it. He landed on the balls of his feet, rolled over and stood up. Quinn followed him. Rossi and MacRae helped them stretch out the sheet, and they positioned themselves immediately below the balcony. Kitty helped the sultan over the railing. His heels perched on the very edge of the balcony, his back to the railing; he closed his eyes and stepped out into space. The sheet was torn from Torrance’s grip, but not before it had slowed the sultan’s descent sufficiently to spare him from harm.

  ‘You okay, Your Majesty?’ asked Torrance.

  ‘Oh, yes indeed! That was most exhilarating, thank you. And please, call me Alex.’

  Above, Kitty was helping Irina over the railing. The blonde had grabbed a handbag from somewhere: the days of the delicate little clutches of Torrance’s youth were gone; Irina’s handbag was one of those big, practical leather holdalls that contained everything a modern woman might need. Torrance, Rossi, Quinn and MacRae stretched the sheet between them again. Irina adopted the same position the sultan had before her – heels perched on the edge of the balcony, her backside to the railing which she gripped with both hands – but could not bring herself to make that final leap of faith. Kitty took a coin from the pocket of her skirt and dropped it down the back of Irina’s neck. The Russian gave a shocked gasp and took one hand off the railing to clutch at it. Kitty prised her other hand off and gave her an almighty shove between the shoulder blades that sent her toppling into the blanket below.

  Torrance helped Irina to her feet. ‘You okay, miss?’

  Irina was less interested in answering his question than she was in shaking a fist up at Kitty. ‘Angliyskaya svinomatka!’ she spat in a tone that suggested there was little love lost between the Russian and the Wren. ‘You nearly killed me!’

  ‘Sorry, Irina. Needs must when the devil drives.’ Kitty tore a rent up the side of the skirt of her tropical whites, revealing a little more thigh than the Catholic Legion of Decency would have approved of. Torrance could not help noticing she had rather good legs. Indeed, she had a rather good everything. She might have been eclipsed by Irina’s beauty, but stand her next to Margaret Lockwood and you would have been hard pressed to tell which one was the glamorous actress and which one was the naval officer.

  She jumped without waiting for Torrance and his comrades to stretch out the bed sheet, landing lightly on the balls of her feet. The glamorous WRNS uniform might be the envy of the Auxiliary Territorial Service and the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, but the shoes were sensible.

  Yashiro appeared on the balcony above them, his hands still tied behind his back. Nevertheless, he smirked at them. ‘See you soon!’

  Torrance aimed his Thompson up at Yashiro, then caught sight of Kitty glaring disapprovingly at him. Seeing his danger, the Japanese hastily retreated from view.

  ‘Just wanted to put the wind up him,’ Torrance lied to Kitty.

  She did not look convinced. ‘Which way?’

  ‘Lead the way, Lefty. Here, did you see that Jap’s eyes?’ he added to Quinn as Rossi led them across the terrace to the stable yard. ‘They were bluer than mine!’

  On the roof of the garage, Shapiro now had the Bren on automatic, firing bursts towards the lawn at the front of the house. As Torrance and his group dashed across the stable yard, he was aware of the crack of Arisaka rifles and bullets whining past. Shapiro barked ‘Change!’ at Gibson, who whipped out the empty magazine and replaced it with a full one.

  Someone behind Torrance cried out. When he reached the cover at the side of the garage, he turned and saw MacRae sitting on the ground at the corner of the house. A trail of blood led from where MacRae had fallen to where he now sat, breathing hard and ashen-faced.

  Twelve

  Thursday 1040 – 1500

  Rossi and Quinn helped Irina and the sultan climb up to where Cochrane waited to clasp their hands and haul them up onto the roof of the garage. Torrance glanced across to where MacRae sat, blood running out between the fingers of the hand he had pressed to the wound in his side. He braced himself to dash across, but no sooner had he broken from the cover at the side of the garage than a bullet whip-cracked past his head. He instinctively threw himself back behind cover. The enemy fire was just too heavy.

  He tried the back door to the garage and found it locked.
There was no keyhole, so he supposed it was bolted from the inside. He smashed the glass in the window of the door with the butt of his Thompson and reached through, groping for the bolt. A moment later he staggered inside. Slinging the Thompson across his back, he stared at the cars. Both were things of beauty, but the Duesenberg would provide more cover than the Alfa Romeo.

  He slid behind the wheel. He had forgotten to open the garage door. He imagined standing there, in full view of the advancing Japanese, while he made sure the door was pushed all the way up and over. Perhaps not. Of course, the only alternative was not going to do the Duesenberg’s paintwork any favours, but since it was about to get riddled with bullets anyway that seemed a moot point. He pulled out the choke, pressed the starter button, pushed the gas pedal halfway down and cranked the engine. It fired at once, from the word go running as smoothly as only a Duesenberg’s engine could. Whatever had become of the sultan’s chauffeur (what was it they called them out here, syces?), no one could accuse him of neglecting his duties.

  He lifted his gaze to the ceiling of the car. ‘Forgive me, Fred Duesenberg, wherever you are!’ he murmured, and jammed the gas pedal all the way to the floor.

  There were only a few feet between the Duesenberg’s bonnet and the back of the garage door, but the door was a flimsy thing of lightweight wooden panelling and the Duesenberg’s bumper was made of steel and had two and a half tons of metal powered by a seven-litre straight-eight engine with the dual overhead camshaft and the optional supercharger to back it up. Even at barely one mile per hour, it was no contest: the door splintered into several pieces which the Duesenberg pushed aside or nosed her way under without losing a fraction of her speed, which had almost reached three miles per hour by the time she had lurched her way across the stable yard to slam her bonnet into the side of the house.

  By then Torrance had already thrown himself sideways across the passenger seat. He was showered with glass as a bullet smashed through the window. Another bullet punched clean through the door on the driver’s side: apparently coachwork was not as bulletproof as he had hoped. He opened the door on the passenger’s side and squirmed his way out onto the gravel of the stable yard. He could still hear bullets slamming into the Duesenberg’s coachwork, but no bullet holes appeared on his side, which proved that even if a bullet could penetrate one side of a car, it struggled to manage two. Even so, Torrance had to stay low: bullets continued to smash through the windows, and it would not be long before someone thought to shoot under the car; though within a few seconds both the tyres had been shot out on the other side, which narrowed the clearance under the chassis.

  Torrance crawled across to where MacRae lay. The Glaswegian was no longer conscious. There was a bullet hole in his stomach and his shirt was soaked with blood. Torrance patched it up as best he could with a field dressing before dragging MacRae by his webbing across the stable yard. The Duesenberg provided him with cover for the first twelve feet, but the Glaswegian was dead weight and Torrance was already exhausted by the time he had dragged him as far as the car’s rear bumper. The corner of the garage was only five bullet-swept feet away.

  ‘Right, then, come on you bastard!’ Backing across the open space, hunched over, he continued to drag MacRae behind him, his ammo boots scuffling in the gravel while bullets snapped through the air all around him. The Japanese Arisaka rifle fired a ·3-inch calibre bullet. Torrance wondered what it was going to feel like, having a bullet like that punching through your flesh, tearing through skin, nerve endings, tearing muscle and sinew, blood spurting from severed arteries. He had never been shot himself, though he had known plenty of comrades who had, and one or two who had lived to tell the tale. One said it was agony from the word go, the other said you hardly noticed it at the time, the agony only came later. Who to believe? Time enough to worry about that when it happened.

  Torrance glanced over his shoulder. Three more feet to go. Jesus, had he really only covered two feet since he had left the cover of the Duesenberg, what seemed like a lifetime ago? The Japanese were firing at him from the cover of a shrubbery by the side of the drive, less than fifty yards away; how they had not hit him yet he could not imagine. Most of their shots appeared to pass over his head. Maybe their eyesight was every bit as bad as British propaganda claimed. And Shapiro was still returning their fire from the roof of the garage, which must have put their aim off.

  ‘Oh, for crying out loud!’ Quinn broke cover to help him. With Torrance hauling on one of MacRae’s webbing straps and the Australian hauling on the other, they made much better time: a few seconds later, they had him safely behind the side of the garage. Quinn crouched and felt for a pulse in MacRae’s wrist, and then in his neck.

  ‘Help me get him over the wall!’ said Torrance.

  Quinn shook his head. ‘Sorry, mate. He’s had it.’

  ‘We can rig up a stretcher, carry him back to our lines…’

  ‘Don’t you get it? He’s chucked in his marbles.’

  Oh Christ, no, thought Torrance. Not Smiler. If anyone had been going to survive this sodding war, it had been Smiler MacRae. He stared in horror at the corpse.

  Quinn shook him by the shoulders. ‘Come on, mate, we gotta get outta here!’

  Snapping out of his daze, Torrance nodded and stood with his back to the wall to make a step-up, boosting Quinn up to where Rossi and Kitty waited to clasp him by the hand and haul him up. Once Quinn was on the roof, Torrance had to take a run up and leap himself. It took him three goes, but at last he was able to hook his hands over the pantiles long enough for Rossi and Kitty to help haul him to safety. Cochrane had already gone, though Shapiro and Gibson still blazed away with the Bren.

  ‘Solly, Hoot, let’s go!’ shouted Torrance.

  ‘You go, mate!’ yelled Shapiro. ‘We’ll hold them off for a few more seconds.’

  Torrance was not going to argue. He jumped from the roof to land amongst the rubber trees in the plantation growing behind the grounds of Istana Mimpi, and hurried after Quinn, Rossi and Kitty. Even as they caught up with Cochrane, Irina and the sultan, Shapiro and Gibson caught up with them, the big Australian lugging the Bren over his shoulder with a big grin on his face as if he was having the time of his life.

  The nine of them made their way through the rubber trees to the bridge where Varma awaited them. The Indian greeted the sultan with a bow. ‘Your Majesty.’

  ‘Please, call me Alex.’

  ‘And… ladies?’

  ‘Ma’am, Miss Polyakova, this is Sapper Varma,’ Torrance introduced them curtly. ‘This is Third Officer Killigrew – Colonel Hamilton’s agent – and Miss Irina Polyakova, the sultan’s fiancée.’

  ‘Enchanté, ma’mselles.’ Varma clicked his heels and bowed to each in turn, taking their hands and slobbering all over them, much to Torrance’s disgust. Only lounge lizards and phoneys did that sort of thing these days, he thought bitterly. He knew that for a fact, because he himself did it all the time when he ‘borrowed’ an officer’s uniform to flirt with planters’ daughters in the ballroom at Raffles Hotel. And it sometimes worked. From the way Irina and Kitty simpered at him, it was working on them, too. Shameless bloody hussies, Torrance thought enviously.

  They hurried along the banks of the stream. ‘That was a bonzer job you did with the fireworks display,’ Quinn congratulated Varma.

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Rossi. ‘We couldnae have pulled it off without ye.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ said Torrance. ‘We were the ones who had to shoot our way into a mansion full of Japs. He wasn’t even being shot at.’

  ‘Not that it matters,’ said Varma, ‘but a couple of the Japanese soldiers who fled through the main gate when the Bren opened up blundered straight into where I was hiding.’

  ‘My goodness!’ exclaimed Irina. ‘Did you have to…?’

  ‘Fortunately for me… unfortunately for them… I was less surprised than they were. But… where is the fellow with the scarred face?’

  ‘Dead,’ Torrance sai
d bitterly.

  ‘I am sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Not that the corporal here didn’t do everything he could to save his life,’ said Kitty. ‘To be fair, I think that was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen with my own eyes. I mean, you hear stories about soldiers rushing out under fire, risking their own lives to save their comrades, but you never really think—’

  ‘Oh, ye think that’s why Slugger went back for Smiler?’ asked Rossi.

  ‘Well, isn’t it?’

  ‘Slugger there had two tickets for a boat to take him and a lady friend off Singapore. He’s been planning to desert for days. Only Smiler pinched them off him. Slugger wisnae going back for Smiler. He was going back for those tickets. Some hero!’

  Everyone stopped and stared at Torrance in disgust. ‘So that’s all you were interested in,’ said Kitty. ‘A chance to desert your comrades. And I was thinking of recommending you for a decoration.’

  ‘He is not a man,’ said Irina. ‘He is a trus… in English you say… a chicken without balls?’

  ‘You bloody mongrel!’ spat Quinn. ‘I risked my neck to help you drag Smiler to safety. If I’d known you were only interested in those bloody tickets, I’d’ve left you to die.’

  ‘You should be ashamed of yourself!’ said the sultan.

  As one, they all turned their backs on Torrance and continued along the bank of the stream. The corporal followed with a glum expression on his face. He did not even have the tickets to compensate for such opprobrium: in his grief at MacRae’s death, he had clean forgotten to search his corpse for them.

  * * *