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By Root 5462 0

endless delays and traffic jams on the way to Tanglin, Walter had a camp bed and a desk installed in the disused store-keeper’s office in the godown on the river where he had brought Joan one day not very long ago. Thank heaven that she and Nigel had got away, at any rate! This little office, which was really just a box of wood and glass without a roof other than that of the godown itself way above, had strong associations for Walter, reminding him of the old days. It was peaceful here, too, and very quiet. The dim light, the smell of the raw rubber which rose in tiers, bale upon bale, to the dim heights of the roof, he found infinitely soothing. There was a window, too, in the office from which he could contemplate the river, not so very different even now from the river he had gazed at as a young man from this spot. He needed this tranquillity to restore and refresh himself after his wanderings in the city.

And still the city’s collapse had not yet reached a limit which one could consider, however dreadful it might be, a stable state. On the contrary, familiar streets continued at an accelerating pace to be eaten away by fire and to crumble beneath the bombs and shells. A huge mushroom of black smoke had risen to the north: he paused to look at it from a window of the Singapore Club where he went for lunch. It issued, he was told, from the oil storage tanks at the Naval Base, to which fire had been set to prevent the Japanese capturing the fuel they so badly needed. From the Fullerton Building you looked over Anderson Bridge and the river, then an open space with an obelisk and the solid pile, now distinctly battered, of the Victoria Memorial Hall and Theatre and, away to the right, what might have been the two friendly onion domes of the Arab Community Arch. The smoke had risen on a fat, black stalk which, from where Walter was looking at it, grew just beside the clock tower though in fact its source was on the northern coast: its mushroom cap was growing steadily and spreading to the south-east. Soon it would cover most of the city and, indeed, of the Island itself, snowing as it came a light precipitation of oily black smuts which clung to everything, blackening skin and clothing alike.

When they set out to make another journey after lunch, this time to the docks, Mohammed had to switch on the windscreen wipers on account of the black film of soot that crept over the windscreen. But nowadays one needed to be able to see, not only forward, but upwards as well, because of the Zeros that continually tore in over the shattered palms or floated like hawks up and down the main roads, waiting for something to stir beneath them. Mohammed, therefore, opened the sliding roof of the Alvis so that while he drove he could keep an eye out. He also glanced into his rear-view mirror once or twice, half expecting Walter to protest. But Walter sat mute. It was not very long before one or two black spots of soot began to appear on Walter’s white linen suit. He tried to brush them off, but that only made them worse. Soon his suit, his shirt and his face were covered in oily black smudges.

65

The Japanese fighters were now flying so low in search of people or vehicles to machine-gun that troops, and sometimes even civilians who had picked up a weapon somewhere, would very often fire back from whatever cover they could find. Several times Walter and Mohammed were obliged to leave the Alvis in the road and dive for cover. On one occasion, before they had had time to take shelter, a two-engined Mitsubishi bomber blocked the sky and a burst of machine-gun bullets from its rear turret stitched along the brick wall above their heads, showering them with fragments. Meanwhile, from a sand-bagged gun emplacement beside them a steel-helmeted corporal blazed away with a bren-gun. It jammed. Cursing, he struck off the magazine with a blow of the back of his hand and clipped on a new one. Nearby stood a shattered army lorry in which sat a headless soldier still grasping the wheel.

Once Walter saw one of the fighter-planes hit by a fusillade from