The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [559]
Suddenly the fat man stamped on the brake pedal and the car drifted sideways, locked tyres screaming, until it came to a halt by some sugar cane. Dupigny could see no reason for stopping. The road ahead was empty. But the fat man had bounded out of the car and with his little arms working vigorously on his rotund body he scurried across the road and plunged into the sugar cane. The foliage swallowed him immediately and he gave no further sign of life.
‘Ah!’ Dupigny now saw why he had taken to his heels. A two-engined Mitsubishi bomber had crept into view following the coastline in a westerly direction but already beginning to turn inland towards the stalled motor-car where Dupigny was sitting. It was flying very slowly and very low. He could see every detail of it. Its wing dipped and it began to turn on a wide curve that would bring it back over George Town and the shipping once more. Dupigny sat there too tired to move and watched the nose of the aeroplane coming towards him, looking, he thought, like the cruel head of a pike. For a moment he could see the four bomb-doors under the belly of the plane and one wheel, half tucked into its undercarriage like an acorn in its cup. Now its camouflaged surface was hard to follow against the dark green flank of Penang Hill but then, as it banked more steeply, the underneath of the plane was eclipsed and the sunlight flared first on one facet of the glass cockpit, then on another, to be picked up in turn by the machine-gun turret just above and behind the wing; as the glare died Dupigny saw the dark silhouette of the gunner’s head and of the gun itself with its barrel swivelling and he realized that the pilot was banking to give the gunner a view of the ground. Now he, too, felt like running for the sugar cane but he knew it was too late: he sat perfectly still, hoping that the gunner would think the car was abandoned. The bomber came curving nearer, only a few feet above the church and market at Pulau Tikus and the rooftops along Cantonment Road. Dust and gravel spurted from the road and seemed to hang there printed on his retina like a formation of stalagmites. A great roar of engines and a draught of wind rocked the car and then the plane had passed over, leaving him with a singing in his ears. Silence fell again. Nothing stirred. Dupigny continued to sit there where he was. In the glove compartment there was a tin of Capstan cigarettes and a box of matches. Dupigny lit one and waited. There was no sign of the fat man.
After he had finished the cigarette, he put the gear lever in neutral and got out the starting-handle again. When the motor was running he sounded the horn, waited for a while, then drove away, thinking that he might find some sheltered and isolated place to stay until the ‘all clear’ sounded. He was obliged to drive slowly because in the absence of a windscreen he could not see properly. Soon, however, he was on the coast road to Tanjong Bungah. Several civilian cars, an Army lorry and a bren-gun carrier passed him, driving quickly in the direction of George Town. He saw a sign then for the Swimming Club and turned off the road into some trees on the right, parking the car in the shade of one of them.
The Swimming Club’s doors and shutters were open but it seemed deserted except for a frightened looking Chinese at the bar. Dupigny ordered a beer and told the boy to serve it on the verandah. While he was waiting he paused to examine a couple of framed photographs on the wall. One of them, dating from about 1910 to judge by the clothes, showed the ladies and gentlemen of the Penang Swimming Club attending what was evidently an annual prize-giving. The ladies, wearing long dresses and broad-brimmed Edwardian hats swagged with silk and taffeta, sat demurely in the foreground beside a small table laden with silver cups and trophies. The gentlemen, meanwhile, were disposed in studied little groups here and there at the windows and on the verandah of the club-house, suggesting the crowd-scene of a musical comedy when the members of the chorus in