The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [682]
And yet … a man must move with the times. Think of those rice-millers in London for whom the Suez Canal had proved a banana skin on the road to prosperity! This godown was also important to Walter for the great qualities of raw rubber that it contained. A business cannot embody the highest aims of society without trading profitably from its warehouses. What they contain must not be wasted or abandoned. It was out of the question to allow these warehouses not to make the profit which lay piled up within their shadowy walls.
Now on Monday, 8 February, came the news that the Japanese had succeeded in landing on the Island in the course of the night. Walter found himself faced with a disturbing prospect: the contents of this building on the river and of several other godowns nearby would most likely be destroyed in accordance with a contingency plan for the denial of useful materials to the Japanese. He had long expected something of the sort if the Japanese pursued their advance. Reports had reached him in recent weeks that officials from the Public Works Department had been snooping about making enquiries as to the contents of his various godowns. Their first visits had been discreet: the authorities had been anxious not to sap morale by making too obvious preparations for a capitulation … Lately they had become more officious.
Today there came word that the Governor had authorized destruction of British-owned engineering plant, oil and rubber stocks, liquor supplies and various others goods and materials that the Japanese might consider valuable. Well, he had expected that it would come to this … But above all it was the selective nature of the Governor’s denial plans that stung Walter: Blackett and Webb (Engineering) Limited would be razed while neighbouring Chinese enterprises would be left untouched! It was an outrage. He promptly telephoned the Governor … but could not get through. He tried to arrange an appointment with the Governor’s staff: he had never had any trouble doing so before, yet now when it was necessary he found himself being headed off by pipsqueaks of secretaries. He would be left for minutes at a time holding a telephone receiver, obliged to listen to baffling electrical interference: strange hiccups, faintly tinkling xylophones, the ringing of distant telephones on other lines, and ghostly voices speaking gibberish which, however, sometimes held a queer sort of significance.
‘Old men must die. They’d not be human otherwise,’ someone remarked cheerfully in the middle of a blizzard of clickings and buzzings. ‘We’re all on a conveyor belt, each one of us. We all must fall off at the other end. Does that answer your question?’ Walter strained his ears but only to hear what sounded like a whole office full of telephones ringing. He put the telephone down, shattered. He was not used to making his own telephone calls at the best of times: that was his secretary’s job. He picked up the receiver again: this time he heard what he was convinced was a stream of Japanese followed by high-pitched laughter. But they had only been on the Island since the previous night: they would hardly be using the telephones already. He tried to summon one of his assistants who understood Japanese but by the time he arrived the voice had been replaced by silence and, eventually, by the ominous ticking of a clock.
‘Would you mind getting off this line, please?’ demanded a woman’s voice rudely.
‘I certainly would!’ snapped Walter. ‘Blackett here … of Blackett and Webb. I want to speak to the Governor and I’ve been kept waiting forty minutes already.’ A click. No answer.
Walter was abruptly seized by a dismaying thought: he had surely recognized