The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [651]
Meanwhile, his mind had begun to feed once more on that run of bad luck which had assailed him so abruptly. His mother had not been dead a year and yet his whole career and perhaps even his life itself were in jeopardy. He had served on the Western Front in the Great War and had kept his eyes open. Yes, he knew what was what! For the truth was, if you were not on the Western Front you were nowhere … at least as far as the Powers That Be were concerned. The same thing went for this war, too. Right from the start he had been in no doubt about that. You only had to look at the obsolete equipment and untrained men, the odds and ends and riff-raff from India and Australia, all speaking different tongues. You only had to look at the way his best officers had been milked off to lend tone to the Middle Eastern and European theatres to know that Malaya Command was not very much in anybody’s thoughts in Whitehall. The big reputations would be made in Europe: it had happened before and it would happen again. Europe was the fashionable place for a soldier to display his skills. Out here a man could perform miracles of military strategy and much good would it do him! Nobody would pay the slightest attention. But make a blunder and, ah! then it would be different.
‘Out here you can destroy your career in two shakes, but can you make one? Not an earthly.’
The door-handle rattled faintly as someone tried it discreetly from the outside, but it was locked. Could that be Pulford up and about already? Percival paused again, this time about to launch a flanking attack along his jaw from the direction of his right ear. If it was Pulford, he himself must be running even later than he had realized. He usually beat Pulford to the breakfast table. Poor Pulford! His career, too, depended on obsolete equipment … fancy having to send up the poor old Vildebeeste against modern Jap fighter planes! He had taken a liking to Pulford partly through loneliness, for neither man had brought out his family; he had not for a moment regretted inviting him to come and live here. One needed a staunch friend in a place as full of intrigue and back-biting as Singapore.
‘They’re all watching out for their own interests, every man jack of ’em, beginning with the Governor!’
How could the GOC Malaya be expected to defend a country whose civilians devoted their every effort to baulking his initiatives? What had happened to the Straits Settlements Volunteer Force, for instance? You might well ask! Volunteer force indeed! When he had tried to call up part of it for training the civilians had created such a song and dance that the Government had insisted on his abandoning the rest of the training programme. Why? Because a rash of strikes on the plantations had been blamed on the fact that the Europeans were absent … while the truth of the matter was that they were not paying their workers enough. Naturally, he had protested. A waste of time! The Governor had waved some instructions from the Colonial Office in his face: these declared that exemption from training should not be what he (the GOC) considered practicable ‘but what he, the Governor, thought was necessary to keep up tin and rubber production’.
And now, when retreat to the Island had become inevitable (as you were! ‘withdrawal’ to the Island), would you believe it? He was up to his tricks again. This time Sir Shenton was declining to intervene with the Chinese Protectorate who were refusing exit permits to Chinese who wanted to leave the Colony. He had done his best to spell it out to the Governor: in a very short time they would find themselves under siege on an island already teeming with refugees. Non-combatants must not only be allowed but encouraged to leave, if necessary made to leave. But oh no, the Governor would not listen … for him this exit permit business was just another chapter in a story which had begun long before the Japanese had invaded. Sir Shenton Thomas was too august a figure to consider explaining himself to the GOC. But Percival had heard the story anyway