Singapore Grip - J. G. Farrell [312]
While Matthew was sitting at some distance from the fire drinking tea with his back against a wall, Adamson and his dog approached. Two godowns containing rubber, engine-oil, copra, palm-oil and latex stored as a liquid were on fire only a few feet back from the river. Although there was no hope of saving the godowns themselves Adamson was afraid that burning liquid might flow from them into the river and set the crowded sampans and tongkangs on its surface alight. He wanted Matthew to relieve one of his men who was directing a jet from the roof of a tall building nearby. ‘Can you manage the branch by yourself? I’ll send someone to help as soon as I can.’ Matthew nodded. The dog eyed him dubiously and then looked up at Adamson, as if afraid that Matthew might not be up to it.
It seemed to take an age of climbing ladders up through the dark warehouse before he finally emerged on the roof. He immediately saw the silhouette of the man he had come to relieve: he had lashed the branch to an iron railing, but loosely enough so that he could still turn the jet a few degrees, and was slumped against the parapet which ran round the roof; he found it hard to get up when he saw Matthew. ‘I’ve been up here all night,’ he said. ‘I thought they’d forgotten me.’
‘Tea is being served down below: if you hurry you might get some.’
‘Enjoy the view,’ called the departing fireman, leaving Matthew alone on the roof. He turned his attention to the fire. From this position he could look down over the godowns and he wondered whether Adamson realized how far gone they already were; it seemed unlikely that a single jet could make any difference. However, he played the jet over the roofs on the river side, trying to let it stream down the outside walls to cool them and keep them standing as long as possible.
Soon he began to savour the strange sensation of being marooned above the city in the hot darkness; he was pervaded by a feeling of isolation and melancholy. The occasional drone of a bomber in the black sky above him, the slamming of distant doors from the ack-ack guns, the dull thud, thud, thud of bombs falling, the rapid popping and sighing of the Bofors guns, even the deep bark of the artillery … all this seemed perfectly remote from his vantage point over the rooftops. Up here he was only conscious of the moaning and creaking of the branch against the railing and the faint steady hiss of the jet as it curved down towards the fire. He could see a considerable distance, too: he could see the rapid flashes advancing along Raffles Quay and the Telok Ayer Basin as a stick of bombs fell, and the hulk of what might have been a barge burning near Anderson Bridge at the mouth of the river and another vessel blazing brilliantly in the inner roads, and yet other fires scattered here and there in the densely crowded residential quarters to the south and east of New Bridge Road. ‘If a bomb fell here,’ he thought suddenly, ‘nobody would ever find me,’ and he peered anxiously down towards the street to see if anyone was being sent up to join him, but with the smoke he could see nothing.
After a while he grew, calm again, soothed by the regular creaking of the branch. He was so remote from what was happening down there, after all. It seemed impossible that anything happening on the ground could touch him. Below was the fire, and beyond the fire and all around lay the city of Singapore where two hostile armies were struggling to subdue each other in the darkness. Up here it made no difference. All that concerned him was the fire raging below him: he must concentrate on playing the jet where it would do most good. But soon he found himself wondering whether his efforts might not be superfluous. With a change in the tide, burning oil from a stricken vessel at the mouth of the river was already beginning to flow up towards the tightly packed sampans and barges in the heart of the city. As the sky grew pale on the eastern horizon Matthew watched in dismay the leisurely advance of this fiery serpent.
70
‘The Blackett and Webb godown is threatened. Walter