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By Root 5650 0

another day or two’s rest and he should be back on his feet again. However, Dr Brownley had taken the Major aside on his way out to whisper one or two additional comments. He explained that a patient can suffer a serious depression after such a high fever: the system has to recover from the shock imposed upon it. Well, he happened to know that Matthew was a young man of great sensibility, excitable, given to sudden impulses. He did not, of course, consider it likely that Matthew, on hearing the news of the last few days, would snatch up a razor and cut his throat. There was, fortunately, no prospect of his doing anything so foolish (though it would probably be as well not to leave any sharp instruments lying about). It was simply that having just emerged from a debilitating illness a young man who, unlike himself and the Major, had been spared some of the buffets of life, was more likely to take things to heart which a more seasoned campaigner would shrug off without a second thought. For this reason the Major’s tone was cheerful as he recounted the reverses of the past few days.

Matthew listened in some surprise, first to the Major’s reassuring description of the first Japanese air-raid on Singapore, which had barely disturbed the slumbers of those living near where the bombs had fallen, then to his account of Japanese landings at Kota Bahru and elsewhere: where the latter were concerned the Major could inspire himself directly from the sedative communiqués issued by General Headquarters and did not have to fumble for words. So things were going along splendidly on that front but there was even better news to come! The Major, becoming more pleased than ever with the way things were going, explained that after the Prince of Wales and the Repulse had been sunk off the east coast a remarkably large …

‘Sunk!’ cried Matthew, lifting his large fist and waving it as if ready to fell the Major, not out of hostility but out of a need for a physical expression of his excitement, and at the same time rolling his eyeballs in a way which gave the Major to believe that perhaps his precautions in the breaking of bad news had not been exaggerated.

‘Sunk! But that’s dreadful! Our most modern battleship and cruiser …’

The actual sinking of these two capital ships, the Major agreed hastily, was not altogether good news, but what he had been going to say was that a remarkably large proportion of the officers and ratings of the two ships had been saved, some two thousand men.

‘But surely, the Japanese Navy isn’t …’

‘It wasn’t their Navy. It seems they were sunk by torpedobombers. But the thing is that …’ The Major paused, unable to think what the thing was. There was no disguising the fact that this was a terrible blow. Without those two powerful ships, and taking into account the loss of the American Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese would have control of the South China Sea, and perhaps even of the Indian Ocean as well. The Australian and Dutch Navies surely had nothing to challenge them.

‘But what was the RAF doing?’ demanded Matthew, sinking back weakly against his pillow, extenuated by this sudden surge of emotion. The Major made no reply however, and silence fell. It was very hot in the room. The shutters were partly closed for the sake of the black-out (or ‘brown-out’); the only illumination came from a bedside lamp whose shade had been swathed by Cheong in heavy cloth so that it shed an oblique light against the wall. At the edge of this pool of light a tiny brown lizard of the kind known as a ‘chichak’ had stationed itself on the wall, motionless, its fat little legs flexed like those of a Japanese wrestler. Presently it emitted an oddly metallic clicking sound and the Major explained that the Malays believed that chichaks brought good luck to the houses where they appeared and that, moreover … He sighed and silence fell again.

‘What’s that noise?’

A roaring sound had begun outside and was steadily increasing in volume.

‘It’s just the rain,’ said the Major, wondering how the rest of the British warships might be