The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [704]
‘You can’t stay here, Walter, you know. Have you made no arrangements to leave Singapore?’
‘I suppose like everybody else you want to get me out so you can burn the place down,’ said Walter grimly.
‘Don’t be absurd. It’s going to burn down without our help, I’m afraid. In any case, we’re trying to stop fires, not start them.’ He paused, noticing for the first time Walter’s dishevelled appearance. The clean clothes he had put on the evening before were already covered in dust and even his hair was thick with it; both his eyelids were red and swollen, perhaps from insect bites. His eyes kept wandering restlessly from one place to another, without meeting Matthew’s gaze for more than a moment.
‘I’m glad your father didn’t live to see this,’ he said presently with an air of resignation. After a silence he added with a sigh: ‘There was some fool here yesterday, an army chap … D’you know what he said to me?’
‘Well, no …’
‘I’ll tell you. He had the gall to tell me that we were leaving the troops to do the fighting while we only thought of feathering our nests! Can you beat it? He tried to claim that civilians have been trying to stop his demolition squad from doing its work … He actually said …’
‘But Walter, it’s true. That has been happening in some places … Look, we must go now. We’ll talk about it another time.’ Matthew got up and again looked anxiously out of the window: this time a bright banner of sparks was floating by. ‘Have you no way of getting out of Singapore? It’s obvious we aren’t going to hold out much longer.’
‘As a matter of fact, I have,’ said Walter, chuckling grimly. ‘Certain business acquaintances are anxious to share their boat with me. What time is it now? They talk of leaving this evening from Telok Ayer Basin. You’d better come too, I should think. They wouldn’t refuse to take a Webb, even if it meant throwing someone else overboard!’ And Walter gave a sudden shout of laughter which rang in the rafters high above them. The row of bats slept on undisturbed, however.
‘After all,’ he went on presently, following some train of thought of his own. ‘War is only a passing phase in business life … No, it was Lever of Lever Brothers who said that, not me! Yes, it seems that in the Great War he wanted, naturally enough, to go on selling his … what did he call it? Sunlight Soap to the Germans … He made quite a fuss when they wouldn’t let him. He argued that the more soap they let him make the more glycerine there would be for munitions … which is true enough when you come to think about it. If you want my opinion there’s nothing like a spot of patriotism for blinding people to reality. Now they’d do far better to leave certain things in Singapore as they are … Though destroy the oil the Japs need by all means, I don’t hold with people standing in the way of demolition squads if they’re acting sensibly … But no, you can’t argue with these people. You can’t say, look here, let’s discuss it sensibly! They swell up with patriotic indignation. They refuse to believe that in due course, probably in a matter of months, we’ll have come to some understanding with Japan and everything will continue as before. Except that in this case it won’t continue as before … why? Because a lot of self-righteous bloody fools will have destroyed our investments, lock, stock and barrel … and we shall have to start again from scratch!’
‘Walter,’ exclaimed Matthew, standing up excitedly, ‘it’s not self-righteous fools who are destroying your investment, it’s the bloody Japanese bombers! My God! Look at this …’
A momentary shift in the wind had peeled the smoke back from the river like a plaster from a wound. Near at hand a row of blazing godowns pointed towards their window like a fiery arrow whose barb had lodged in a shed burning directly beneath them. It was not this, however, but the river itself