Singapore Grip - J. G. Farrell [273]
‘Why didn’t you tell me straight away that she was your tart?’ he demanded in an aggrieved tone. ‘For chaps’ tarts we can make exceptions.’
Smith had finished writing. The Major picked up the paper, read it carefully and put it in his pocket. ‘One more thing. If I hear you’ve done anything to countermand this …’
But Smith had already fled for safety from the bombs and from the Major.
60
The first week of February was a week of frantic activity for General Percival. Such was the swiftness with which the Japanese had followed up their attacks throughout the campaign that he knew he could not count on more than a week’s grace before they launched their attack on Singapore Island itself. There was so much to be done, so little time in which to do it. He no longer even returned to Flagstaff House to sleep. Instead he would stretch out in his office at Command Headquarters in Sime Road and, within a few moments, would find himself plunging into a torrent of anxieties even more distressing than those he had to face while awake. And so, tired though he was, he preferred to remain conscious, taking cover in his work as if in a fortified position.
Moreover, he now sometimes had the impression that his luck was about to change, that the unseen hand had ceased to wield its influence over his affairs. For if you looked at matters objectively you would see immediately that the situation could have been a great deal worse. After all, was it not the case that the major part of his forces from the mainland had withdrawn unscathed across the Causeway and had been redeployed successfully to their defensive positions on the Island? They were there now, digging in as best they could under the shells which had started coming over the water from Johore. True, the 22nd Brigade had been lost, apart from a few stragglers who had managed to find their way across the Strait in small boats or who had been picked up at night by what was left of the Navy. On the other hand, the remainder of the (British) 18th Division was due to arrive on the 5th. It was Percival’s belief that it would arrive just in the nick of time.
Singapore Island in shape somewhat resembled the head of an elephant lumbering towards you, with both its flapping ears outstretched and with Singapore Town about where the mouth would be. On the extreme tip of the elephant’s left ear (on the east coast, that is) were the great fixed guns of the Johore and Changi batteries. On the other ear there was Tengah airfield and the coastline of creeks and mangrove swamps. As it happened, neither ear was now of very much use to Percival. Tengah was within easy range of observed artillery fire from the mainland and could no longer be used by the few remaining Hurricanes, detained on the Island for the purposes of morale and for the escorting of the last convoys: they now had to use the civil aerodrome at Kallang. As for those enormous, leopard-striped fifteen-inch guns at Changi which had contributed so much to Singapore’s reputation as a fortress, they had been sited to deal with an attack by ships from the sea, although some of them could indeed be traversed to fire into Johore; their ammunition (in short supply, incidentally) since it was armour-piercing, was also intended for use against ships and was expected to bury itself too deeply to be effective against targets on land.
No, although the ears must also, of course, be defended against an enemy landing, it was really the head itself that mattered, for it was in this central part of the Island that everything of importance was located. On the crown of the elephant’s head the Island was (or rather, had been) joined to the mainland by the Causeway which was a little over a thousand yards in length. When the last of the Argylls, who had been given the risky job of covering the withdrawal, had crossed safely back to the Island a considerable hole had been blown in the Causeway … or so it had seemed at first. Percival had been quite pleased with it, seeing the water flowing