Singapore Grip - J. G. Farrell [284]
‘I have an idea it’s that singing team,’ said the Major, ‘the Da Sousa Sisters … the girls Walter wanted to have in his jubilee procession. He must have arranged for someone to take them to the boat in his car.’
After a while, in support of this theory as to their identity the young women sitting on their luggage in the back of the Bentley put their marcelled heads together and their arms round each other’s shoulders and began to sing:
Singapore, hulloa, hulloa!
In silk and satin and boa
We are the girlies from Goa!
The Major was too preoccupied, however, to be greatly concerned with the identity of some tipsy young women in Walter’s car. He was more worried by the glowing clock on the dashboard (had it stopped or was it a quarter-past eleven already?). It was true that they had now almost reached the corner of Trafalgar Street but the nearer they came to the docks the slower their progress. Now increasingly they found themselves halted in the same place for several minutes at a time. The heat, the exhaust fumes and the ever-present drifting smoke from burning buildings made it hard to breathe. Vera lay with her head slumped against the back of the seat, her eyes closed. The minute hand on the dashboard crept on.
In the car ahead of them as time went on the gaiety of the Da Sousa Sisters was replaced by a rather sullen silence: evidently they, too, were becoming anxious about reaching the boat in time. Soon a squabble erupted and they began to scream, either at each other or at their driver, it was hard to say. Then they began to shriek abuse at the car in front of them which for some reason was being abandoned by its passengers. Eventually the Bentley managed to pull round it and the column advanced a few more yards. On the sea side of the road a warehouse which had been damaged in an earlier raid had been left to burn, casting a red glow over the line of cars ahead and bringing an intolerable increase in the temperature for some distance round about. It now became clear that a number of the cars ahead had been abandoned and were blocking the road beyond redemption.
‘I think we’d better walk,’ Matthew said. Vera said that she felt well enough to do so but it was obvious that the smoke, the heat and the fumes were making her feel ill.
‘You go ahead,’ the Major said. ‘I’ll see if I can get rid of the car and then come back and help.’
Matthew opened the door, threw out Vera’s suitcase and helped her out into the road. As he was doing so The Human Condition suddenly sprang off the front seat into the darkness and vanished. ‘Hey! Come back!’ called the Major feebly, but this was no time to worry about a lost dog. Matthew picked up Vera’s suitcase and, supporting her as best he could, set off with her into the flickering night. As they were passing the Bentley another squabble suddenly broke out between the young ladies and their driver. It was clear that they considered him to be responsible for the traffic jam in which they found themselves.
‘You said you taking us to bloody boat!’ they screamed. ‘You damn well better take us to bloody-damn boat, OK!’
‘Matthew!’ called a despairing voice from the Bentley and Matthew stopped, peering at the car in astonishment, for there, slumped in the front seat, his face weirdly illuminated by the flickering light of the burning building nearby as if by infernal flames was Monty Blackett.
‘I say, you couldn’t give me a hand with some of this luggage, could you, old man? It’s so heavy I can’t manage it all. Go on, be a sport!’
‘Impossible! I have all I can manage already.’
‘Look here, Matthew, there’s a good fellow,’ pleaded Monty in a more confidential tone, ‘these young ladies here, who are simply charming, by the way, will let us hide in their cabin till the boat has sailed, in return for helping them, I mean to say … We’ll be in Bombay in