The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [714]
This Sunday, then, was the last day of the defence of Singapore, the last day of freedom for the British who remained on the Island … almost, you might say with hindsight, the last day of the British Empire in these parts. It took time for news of the impending surrender to percolate through the stricken city, particularly since the bombing, strafing and shelling continued unabated all morning and afternoon. Matthew still had not heard the news as he struggled in the mid-day heat near the Firestone factory to get the body of a young Scot into the back of the van … as a matter of fact, by now he had lost count of the days and could not have told you that today was Sunday. Nor had the Major heard the news as, after a rather odd tiffin of tinned sardines and tinned pears, he and Captain Brown held a cut-rate auction of the remaining girls from the Poh Leung Kuk in the presence of the handful of bridegrooms he had persuaded to assemble, thanks to the good offices of Mr Wu. The bridegrooms were apathetic and uneasy and bidding was not brisk. But the Major comforted himself with the thought that to get them husbands of any description in the circumstances was not bad going. How would those girls who had declined to accept one or other of the Major’s bridegrooms fare during the inevitable Japanese occupation of Singapore? He suspected that some of them, to judge by the lipstick and nail-varnish that was beginning to reappear, might fare all too well.
Matthew was now delivering the young Scot’s body to the General Hospital in Outram Road. It had taken an age to get the body into the van (a corpse is heavy and Matthew was weak) and it was two o’clock exactly as he reached the hospital. There, beside one of the paths leading up the slope to the main building, a mass grave had been dug. He looked up, afflicted by the sight of so many bodies laid out on the lawn for burial, and noticed the white clock tower above the portico of the main block with its four small, black clock faces. It came as a shock, somehow. The clock looked so peaceful nestling there beneath drooping classical garlands while on the ground below there was nothing to be seen but carnage and violent death. Two o’clock.
Two, three hours passed in a dream. The guns had fallen silent at last and bombs ceased to fall on the city. At the Mayfair there was no sign of Vera. Matthew longed to lie down there and sleep but time was slipping away and he must find her soon if they were to escape that night. A little later, without remembering how he had got there, he found himself sitting on his heels and gazing down at the wall of the storm-drain that ran along Orchard Road; part of it had fallen in, revealing a great wedge of neatly packed pink bricks, like the roe of a gutted fish, each with the word Jurong neatly printed on its back.
Later again he passed Dr Brownley scurrying along Battery Road in the direction of Whiteaways’: he called to him but the Doctor paid no attention. His eyes were shining, his pulse was racing, he suffered a painful, joyful constriction of his respiration. In his ears, instead of Matthew’s greeting, a celestial music sounded, while in his pocket rested $985·50 cents which in a moment he would be exchanging for the only true object of his desire, that article which had fixed him with its basilisk stare from Whiteaways’ window, whatever it was. Dr Brownley was flying as if to greet a lover (but let him pass on, for which of us is so poor in spirit that he has never experienced the delights of being united in bonds of ownership with a piece of merchandise?).
Then Matthew, having wished the Doctor well under his breath, was standing in the cathedral grounds inspecting a collection of furniture that had been carried outside. The pews, he noticed, were made of solid wood, such as one might find in any