Singapore Grip - J. G. Farrell [319]
‘I think this must be the Serangoon Road,’ said Matthew. ‘If you take the left-hand fork you go to Woodleigh. I don’t know where the other one goes.’
‘We’re trying to get to Kallang.’
‘Kallang should be over there somewhere,’ said Matthew vaguely, pointing into the blackness with his throbbing hand. ‘Those gun-flashes must be the ack-ack from the aeodrome, I should think. But you’ll have to go back into town to get there. I don’t think there’s any road across. Are the Japs somewhere about?’
‘No idea, old chap. To tell the truth I doubt if I’d know one if I saw one. I’ve only been here a week. You’ll probably find them up the road somewhere. Well, thanks a lot.’
Matthew walked on into the darkness. Now there came a trickle of refugees from the opposite direction. He could just make them out as they flitted by with their bundles, some dragging carts, others steering monstrously overloaded bicycles. A party of men with rifles passed by: his pulse raced at the thought that this might be a Japanese patrol. The houses dropped away now; for a while there was a lull in the traffic and he could hear the guns grumbling for miles around. He wondered now whether it would be unwise to stretch out and sleep by the roadside, but plodded on, nevertheless. He was very thirsty, too, and his mind dully contemplated the thought of cold water as he walked. At length, however, he could walk no further: his legs would no longer carry him. An abandoned cart lay nearby at the side of the road. He crawled into it and fell asleep immediately with his arms over his face to protect it from mosquitoes. The battle for Singapore eddied and flowed around him while he slept.
72
When Matthew awoke day was breaking: the country round about was already suffused in a dismal grey light that reminded him of winter in England … with the difference that here it was sweltering hot still. While he had been asleep a lorry had parked a few yards away in the sparse shade of a grove of old, healed-up rubber trees. A British officer and an Australian corporal sat beside it, swigging alternately from a khaki water bottle. Matthew’s thirst had revived with horrible and astonishing power now that he was awake and he could hardly avert his eyes from the water bottle. The corporal noticed and said: ‘You look as if you could do with a drink. Come and have some water for breakfast.’
Matthew took the water bottle and drank. He was so thirsty that he had to force himself to hand it back before he finished it. The officer’s name was Major Williams. He said: ‘You look a mess, old boy. What have you done to your hands?’ Matthew told him. He nodded sympathetically and said: ‘Come back with us and we’ll get you a dressing.’
They climbed into the lorry’s cabin and set off. Major Williams commanded a mixed battery of 3·7-inch heavy AA guns and 40-mm Bofors on the airfield at Kallang. He explained that the Japanese planes were at last flying low enough to be in range of the Bofors. Until the past week only the 3·7s had been able to get near them. He added: ‘We lost half a dozen men, though, in a single raid yesterday. It’s not as if there are even any bloody planes left on the aerodrome. I don’t know why they bother.’ They drove on some way in silence, Matthew beginning to feel thirsty again.
‘None of this makes any sense to a chap like me,’ Williams said after a while, gesturing at the rubble-strewn streets. ‘I used to work in an insurance company before the war.’
They had barely reached the aerodrome when a siren began to wail. The corporal, who was behind the wheel, accelerated down one of the supply roads, slamming to a stop some fifty yards short of the nearest gun emplacement: all three sprinted for cover. ‘We have ammo in the back,’ the corporal said when he had recovered his breath. ‘It wouldn’t do to be caught in the open sitting on that lot.’
Now, all around the aerodrome the guns began to thunder. A squadron of Japanese bombers was approaching. This was not a high altitude carpet-bombing raid;