Torrance- Escape From Singapore

by Onbekend

  ‘Right, in the lorry with ’em!’

  Torrance and his companions were marched out of the cinema, while the Australian and his Chinese girl continued necking, oblivious.

  In an off-licence across the street, Sikh police constables were smashing bottles with their iron-bound bamboo clubs. A stream of liquor ran out of the front door, across the pavement into the gutter.

  ‘What a bloody waste!’ said Torrance. ‘What’s that all about?’

  ‘Apparently when Hong Kong fell, the Japanese soldiers got drunk on all the liquor they found and went around raping white women,’ said the sergeant major. ‘The authorities don’t want the same thing happening here.’

  The redcaps’ lorry was parked nearby. The four prisoners were put in the back, hemmed in on all sides by redcaps. Torrance was past caring. At worst they would be charged with desertion, and if he could not talk a court martial down to a charge of absent without leave, his name was not Charles Michael Torrance. And it was unlikely to come to a court martial before the Japanese tore down the Union flag anyway. As they drove through the streets of Singapore, however, all Torrance could see through the opening at the back of the tilt was gangs of soldiers aimlessly wandering the streets of Singapore: British, Australians, Indians.

  ‘Why pick on us?’ he asked the redcap sitting next to him.

  ‘We got our orders.’

  A nasty, cold feeling stirred in the pit of Torrance’s stomach. What if they were not being arrested for desertion at all? He wracked his brain, trying to think of what he might have done to account for his arrest. Starting with that redcap MacRae had murdered at Seletar Naval Base, a life of undetected crime flashed before his eyes, stretching back to his first day in barracks, when he had stolen a postal order for five shillings off one of his fellow recruits the day he had enlisted…

  * * *

  ‘What did you expect? A destroyer?’

  The boat Admiral Ozawa had provided to the Kenpeitai was a lambo, a gaff-rigged vessel with a pronounced sheer to her upper deck for’ard. Presumably she had been fitted with some kind of motor, for she moved under her own impetus even with the sails furled on her two masts. The name Mahsuri was painted on her high, thrusting prow, and only the Rising Sun ensign flying from the jackstaff over her transom betrayed that it had been commandeered by the Imperial Japanese Navy. If ever Yashiro had needed proof there was no love lost between the army and the navy, the fact the navy had chosen to loan this floating coffin to the army was it. He watched her come alongside the rickety wooden jetty at Pasir Panjang and wondered whether the lambo would splinter the pilings, or one of the boards would punch through the lambo’s rotten hull. Yashiro considered it nothing less than a miracle that neither of those things happened.

  Half a dozen men worked on the lambo’s deck, though only the skipper wore anything even remotely resembling the tropical whites of a Japanese naval officer, and those desperately in need of laundering. A deckhand jumped onto the jetty and made a mooring line fast to one of the bollards. Yashiro walked along the jetty.

  ‘Did someone ask for a ship?’ called the skipper. Like his vessel, he was broad in the beam, had seen better days and was very much in need of a good scrubbing.

  ‘I asked for a troopship!’ said Yashiro.

  The skipper gazed across to where Shimura and his men waited ashore. ‘How many men do you have?’

  ‘Twenty-four.’ Yashiro had had no qualms about commandeering more men from the Fifty-Fifth Regiment to replace the men he had already lost.

  ‘Two dozen!’ The skipper whistled as if Yashiro had said two hundred thousand. ‘That’s a real horde you have there, Genghis Khan! Are you Captain Yashiro?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘I’m Atsumi Anko. And if two dozen men is all you have, then this is all the troopship you need.’

  ‘Start getting the men on board,’ Yashiro called to Shimura, before boarding and following the skipper into an atap-thatched deckhouse on the afterdeck. Within, it turned out to be a wheelhouse, chart room and radio shack, all rolled into one. At least the radio seemed relatively modern and in good working order. There was even a gramophone player. Yashiro flicked through a box of platters, but found only decadent Western jazz music.

  ‘Where are we going?’ asked Atsumi.

  ‘Pulau Berdayung.’

  The skipper consulted a chart, the tip of a grubby finger sweeping back and forth across it in search of the island until Yashiro, growing impatient, pointed it out to him.

  ‘How long will it take to get there?’

  ‘Best part of three hours.’

  ‘Three hours? It’s only fourteen kilometres away!’

  ‘Yes, if you go by the direct route. Only the direct route takes you right under the naval batteries at Fort Siloso on Pulau Blakang Mati.’

  ‘The English blew up their batteries yesterday evening.’

  ‘So say you. You’ll forgive me if I prefer not to put your ability to detect an exploding naval battery to the test with my life. We’ll go the long way around: past Bukum, west of Sudong and south of Senang, circling around to approach Pulau Berdayung from the south-east.’

  Yashiro glanced at his watch. It was two in the afternoon now and he felt as if he had wasted enough time waiting for this oaf to arrive. There would still be light in the sky if the Mahsuri reached the island by five. He just hoped they would not get there to find Hamilton had already rescued Killigrew and the sultan from the island.

  He watched as the last of Shimura’s men boarded. ‘All aboard?’ Atsumi asked him.

  ‘All aboard.’

  ‘Cast off!’ the skipper ordered the deckhand who had tied the mooring line. ‘Start the engine!’ he called down to where a brown-skinned old man, his scrawny body naked from the waist up but for a ragged turban, tended the engine. Grinning toothlessly, the old man acknowledged Atsumi’s order with a parody of a salute, pulled a couple of levers and gave something a firm tap with a sledgehammer. The engine shuddered into life, spewing black smoke from a slender funnel rising at the back of the deckhouse, and the deck began to throb. Atsumi spun the helm, turning the lambo’s prow away from the jetty and towards the open sea.

  * * *

  The lorry came to a halt and two of the redcaps lowered the tailgate before jumping down, motioning Torrance and the other prisoners to jump down after them. Torrance expected to find himself in the compound of the military police barracks, and was instead astonished to find himself standing on South Boat Quay, where the Singapore River bellied out between the Elgin Bridge and the Cavenagh Bridge, where the sampans of the orang laut, the ‘sea people’, crowded the jetties and walkways. Madame Ching’s floating restaurant – a traditional Chinese junk – was moored nearby with cloth-covered tables laid out on the upper deck. The redcap sergeant major, who had travelled in the cab of the lorry, gestured with his swagger stick for Torrance and his companions to descend the gangplank. Torrance was halfway down when he spied a couple of familiar figures sitting at one of the tables.

  ‘Hullo, hullo, hullo!’ Colonel Hamilton was staring across the river with a pair of binoculars, but he lowered them to hail Torrance with a chipper wave of his malacca cane, while Sapper Varma raised a hand in greeting.

  ‘No!’ Torrance turned abruptly and would have climbed back up to the quayside if Rossi, Quinn and Shapiro had not blocked his way. ‘I know my rights! Back to my barracks or to a military police glasshouse!’

  ‘That’s only if you’re under arrest,’ said the sergeant major. ‘And who said you were under arrest?’

  ‘You found them, then, Sar’nt Major?’ called Hamilton.

  ‘Yes, sah. We got a tip-off we’d find them at the Alhambra. They were watching a kiddies’ film.’

  ‘What are you calling a kiddies’ film?’ protested Torrance. ‘Listen, mate, Laurel and Hardy will be revered as comic geniuses long after you’ve been forgotten!’

  Once Torrance, Rossi, Quinn and Shapiro stood on the deck of the junk, the sergea
nt major stood smartly to attention. ‘Good luck, sah!’

  Hamilton returned his salute. ‘Same to you, Sar’nt Major.’ He raised his binoculars to gaze across the river again. ‘What time have you got, Varma?’

  The sapper glanced at his wristwatch. ‘Quarter to four, sir.’

  ‘I still don’t… no… wait… there it is!’

  ‘There what is?’ asked Torrance.

  ‘See for yourself.’ Hamilton handed him the binoculars.

  ‘What am I supposed to be looking for?’

  ‘The Cathay Building.’

  Torrance was familiar with the Singapore skyline, and the Cathay Building – the tallest on the island, reputedly the tallest in south-east Asia – was not difficult to find. ‘Bloody hell! Is that a Jap flag?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Does that mean it’s over, then? We’ve surrendered?’

  ‘Not quite. It means General Percival has agreed to discuss terms with General Yamashita. By now he’s probably already on his way to Yamashita’s headquarters. I should think they’ll have agreed a ceasefire by midnight tonight, if not sooner. I don’t know whether or not Yamashita knows it – I suspect he does – but he’s got us over a barrel. Almost literally. No drinking water, you see. Too many broken mains.’

  ‘You didn’t bring the four of us here just to tell us that,’ guessed Torrance.

  ‘No, indeed. Sapper Varma and I are headed for Batavia. I can’t afford to let myself be taken by the Japanese – I know too many valuable secrets, you see – so I’m getting out. Not very heroic of me, I know, but I’m getting too old for all that death-or-glory nonsense. The fact of the matter is, I should have evacuated a week ago, but then this al-Jawziyya business came up and like a fool I thought I could get it wrapped up in a couple of days. Sapper Varma has kindly agreed to help me get to Batavia – useful chap, Varma – and I was wondering if you’d care to come with us?’

  If Torrance had learned one principle on the backstreets of the East End, it was that if an offer sounded too good to be true, then it probably was. ‘Why us?’

  ‘Singapore might be about to fall, but the war will go on. We’ll need men like you. Things have changed since I was your age. Even younger than you, come to think of it. Flying F.E.8s for the Royal Flying Corps. What was it they called us? The cavalry of the clouds? Shooting chaps down, inviting them into your mess as your prisoner afterwards if they landed behind your lines in one piece, or going to the most ridiculous lengths to find out when and where they’d be buried, so you could fly over the service to drop a wreath.’

  ‘Sounds very chivalrous, sir.’

  ‘It does, doesn’t it? All utter tommyrot, of course. None of that wins wars. We’re in the business of killing people. That’s all war is, at the end of the day: sheer bloody murder, pure and simple. No place for chivalry, honour, any of that sort of thing. Not against the Nazis or Tojo’s boys. No, what we need is chaps like you: survivors who know that old-fashioned notions will only get a chap killed. There’s an old chum of mine on his way to India to set up some kind of school to teach chaps guerrilla tactics and I think you four are just the sort of fellows he’s looking for to work on his staff.’

  A cushy job behind the lines, teaching fresh-faced squaddies about bush warfare? If it had been too good to be true to begin with, now it had passed all credibility.

  ‘Mind if we think about it, or do you need to have an answer here and now?’ asked Torrance.

  ‘Take all the time you need, old boy. It’ll be a few days before we get to Batavia anyway.’

  ‘And if we get to Batavia and decide we’re not interested in joining this training school?’

  ‘Then I’ll arrange for all four of you to be returned to your respective regiments. I believe the first battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders is currently fighting in North Africa, while the First Nineteenth Australian Infantry are garrisoned at Darwin.’

  ‘Darwin?’ Quinn wrinkled his nose. ‘I’ve been to Darwin, mate. Nothing there but stockyards and dockyards.’

  ‘Then that’s a consideration you’ll have to factor into your calculations when making a decision, isn’t it?’ said Hamilton. ‘But as I say, there’s no rush.’

  Varma gestured to an entry port on the opposite side of the deck. Torrance hesitated nervously, as if expecting there to be a drop down into a pit full of snakes on the other side, but Rossi, Quinn and Shapiro went ahead anyway. Below the port, a companion ladder led down to where a sampan was tied up, the large kind with an inboard motor and an awning of atap thatching curving over the middle portion. Torrance followed them down and boarded the sampan after his friends, only to find weapons and boxes of ammunition everywhere: Lee–Enfields, Thompsons, Bren guns, Webleys, Mills bombs, smoke grenades, and hundreds of magazines, including fifty-round drum magazines for the sub-machine guns. It made the Thompson significantly heavier, but it was worth it if you needed suppressing fire at close range.

  Torrance turned to where Hamilton and Varma followed him aboard the sampan. ‘You two planning to go to war or something?’

  ‘It’s nearly six hundred miles to Batavia, and anything could happen between here and there.’ Hamilton nodded to Varma, who cast off the painter and started the engine. ‘And you wouldn’t expect us to leave all these weapons and all this ammunition for the Japs, would you?’

  ‘Compared to what’s about to fall into the Japs’ laps, this stuff is a drop in the ocean,’ said Torrance.

  Puttering along at four or five knots, the sampan headed under the Cavenagh Bridge. The steel lattice of the Anderson Bridge was a hundred yards downstream, and beyond that the open sea.

  ‘What time will we reach Pulau Berdayung?’ Hamilton asked Varma.

  The sapper checked his watch. ‘Should get there about eight o’clock.’

  Torrance felt that icy feeling stirring in his gut that told him to be afraid. ‘What’s at Pulau Berdayung?’

  ‘Just a little rendezvous we have to make,’ said Hamilton. He snapped his fingers. ‘You remember Mr al-Jawziyya?’

  ‘The sultan? Yeah. I thought he was at the Alexandra Hospital?’

  ‘You haven’t heard, then? The Japanese attacked the Alexandra Hospital yesterday. I was there myself at the time. A damned beastly business. A real Saint Valentine’s Day massacre! But what do you expect from a bunch of gangsters like Tojo’s thugs?’

  ‘If the Japs attacked the Alexandra Hospital, how the bloody hell did the sultan end up on Pulau Berdayung?’

  ‘Not sure I entirely understand it myself, old boy. But no doubt Third Officer Killigrew will be able to explain all that when we pick her up with Mr al-Jawziyya.’

  ‘She’s there too?’

  ‘So I surmise. This message was passed on to me via a wireless operator at Fort Siloso earlier this morning.’ Hamilton handed Torrance a scrap of paper.

  Torrance read it out loud. ‘“I alight where the faithful fairy met a big ape. Lady de Coverly’s father is with me. Colbert’s leg is bared.” That last bit is obvious – she’s asking for a lift – I bet even the Japs would get that one. But what the bleedin’ hell does the rest of it mean?’

  ‘You don’t do crosswords, then?’

  ‘No.’

  Rossi snapped his fingers. ‘She’s saying the sultan is with her!’

  ‘Well done! Good show!’

  ‘How the bloody hell d’you get that?’ asked Torrance.

  ‘A “Lady de Coverly” is a kind of seedless white grape also known as a sultana,’ said Rossi. ‘What’s a sultana’s father called?’

  ‘A sultan,’ said Torrance. ‘And the stuff about alighting where the faithful fairy met a big ape?’

  ‘In Old English, “fay” means “faith”,’ explained Hammond. ‘It’s also another word for “faerie”. And the name of the actress in King Kong.’

  ‘The island in King Kong was called Skull Island.’

  ‘Pulau Berdayung got its name from the boat races the Malays used to have from t
here to Pulau Blakang Mati,’ explained Hamilton. ‘“Berdayung” literally translates as “row” or, if you like, “scull”.’

  Torrance nodded. ‘So we’re just gonna stop by Pulau Berdayung, pick up Kitty and the sultan, and be on our merry way?’

  ‘If all goes according to plan,’ agreed Hamilton.

  ‘Why wouldn’t it all go according to plan? I mean, even if the Japs did intercept that message, there’s no way on earth they could have worked out what it meant, is there?’

  ‘I should say the odds against it are astronomical. Unless, of course, they used triangulation to pin down Killigrew’s location.’

  ‘Right.’ Torrance thought about it for a moment, then picked up one of the Thompsons and began cleaning and oiling it. ‘Any chance of opening her up a bit?’ he asked Varma, who sat at the tiller.

  ‘She’s going flat out as it is. This is a motorised sampan, not a motorboat.’

  The sampan chugged along at a deceptively steady pace that chewed up the miles, and within half an hour the Singapore skyline was sinking astern and the eastern end of Pulau Blakang Mati was visible broad on the starboard beam.

  That was when what looked like smoke started pouring from the exhaust.

  Quinn leaned over the gunwale. ‘Shut it down!’ he told Varma.

  ‘Shouldn’t I let it tick over a few minutes first?’

  ‘Shut it down now! We’re running dry.’

  Varma switched off the engine.

  ‘Fan belt broken?’ asked Torrance.

  ‘Key difference between a car engine and a marine engine,’ said Quinn. ‘Marine engines are water-cooled. Which is a very efficient way of cooling an engine when you have a limitless supply of water all around you, but it’s a bloody pain if someone hasn’t been maintaining the feed lines properly.

  ‘You know about boat engines?’ asked Torrance.

  ‘You might say that. I was a sailor before I joined the army. Mostly on schooners, luggers and windjammers, but I picked up a thing or two about engines as well.’

  Varma gazed anxiously towards the south. ‘Could we not we risk it anyway? It cannot be more than a couple of miles…’