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By Root 5636 0

English church, but with woven rush seats and backs as a concession to the tropics. Inside, a hospital had been improvised. The shuttered sides of the building stood open, as did another row of shutters just beneath the timbered roof. Rows of wounded had been laid on the brown stone flags beneath a couple of dozen silently revolving fans which hung from elbowed brackets along the aisle. Nearer to the altar, a number of men and women knelt in prayer, some of them in uniform. From a distance this scene, like that in the grounds of the General Hospital, appeared relatively peaceful. It seemed to Matthew that the human beings in it looked quite insignificant compared with the great building which rose above them. The fans, revolving like propellers some distance below the dim heights of the roof, gave him the restful impression that he was under water … It was only when he looked with more particular attention at the wounded on the floor that he realized that here, too, people lay shattered and dying. Shocked, he fell back, intending to continue his search somewhere else. But then, at last, he saw Vera working among the patients not far away.

Vera saw him at almost the same moment. She hurried towards him but, at the last instant, hung back. He had thought at first that she was wearing a red and white dress. Now he saw that it was an overall and that she was soaked in blood from head to foot.

‘I know,’ she said immediately. ‘I’m going to change as soon as I can.’ She smiled at him then and burst into tears.

They went outside for a moment. ‘D’you notice something odd?’ he asked suddenly. ‘There are no birds. They’ve all gone. That’s why it seems so quiet.’

‘Tell me where you’ll be later,’ Vera said. ‘I can’t talk to you now. I must go.’

‘I’ll come back here just after seven. There may be a boat leaving tonight which we could both take.’

Vera borrowed his handkerchief, dried her eyes, smiled at him and hurried away. He retired a little way into the grounds but lingered for a while, watching her as she moved from one patient to another.

Later, after lying down for some time on the cathedral lawn, he joined the crowds milling slowly about in Raffles Place. A strange hush had fallen over everything: in it the occasional crash or crackle of a fire not far away in Battery Road or Market Street could be clearly heard. People drifted, for the most part aimlessly, in and out of the shops that were still open, or simply stood about talking in little groups. Many people had suitcases or bundles, evidently refugees from up-country or from districts lying outside the British-held perimeter. There were a number of forlorn-looking children: some of them had been bedded down on the street or in doorways by their parents. There were a great many soldiers: some of them, in defiance of the supposed destruction of liquor, were drunk and belligerent.

A dense crowd had gathered at the far end of Raffles Place in front of the Mercantile Bank. There, under a thick stone colonnade, someone was shouting. Matthew pressed forward into the crowd to see what was happening. A sculpted stone flame resembling an ice-cream cone twirled up over the grandiose entrance to the Mercantile Bank. Above that, two fluted, indigestible stone pillars supported four more twirled ice-cream cones set in dishes. It was beneath this important façade that a ragged British Tommy had chosen to address the crowd. Matthew strained to hear what he was saying.

‘A dirty capitalist war!’ he was shouting. ‘We’ve no reason to be here at all. Listen, mates, which of us gives a damn for the bleedin’ Chinese? Let ’em sort it out for themselves with the bloody Japs … What’s it to do with us? I’ll tell you what … It’s greedy profiteers in London, that’s what it is …’

A drunken shout of approval rose from the troops packed together in front of this vociferous figure. There were jeers, too, and bitter laughter. Matthew muttered: ‘No, that’s all wrong …’ and tried to force his way through the mob. But now, abruptly, a fight flared up just beside him and in the sudden thrashing of fists