A Different Sky (26 page)

Eventually, the truck turned off the road, accelerated noisily up an incline and then descended into the camp. A wide swathe of land had been cleared in the jungle, and rows of barracks stood about a parade ground where men were drilling in neat formations. The shout of orders rang out, whistles shrilled. The number of turbans and dark skins amongst the men surprised Wilfred, and Jenkins followed his gaze.

‘Those are Indian Army units who have never seen combat. It's our job to lick them into shape. Anyone with experience is already fighting in Europe or the Middle East and cannot be spared from those fronts. No need to worry – those Japs have only ever fought the Chinese. If they come up against British steel I predict they'll fall flat on their faces,' Jenkins said, as they skirted the parade ground.

In spite of blackout practices and military preparations, few people in Malaya were of pessimistic mind. Japanese belligerence as their armies marched triumphantly across South East Asia, was not viewed as a threat to peace. British Singapore was more concerned with the run-up to Christmas; Robinsons department store was crowded with shoppers, decorations were everywhere. Some ‘just in case' procedures
had been put in place: people were encouraged to join one of the auxiliary services and air raid practices were now humorously tolerated. People responded to these exercises according to mood, a few taking shelter beneath tables or beds when the siren sounded, but most blithely continuing their activities. In temperate Europe blackouts might be compulsory, but on the Equator heavy cloth across a window reduced a room to suffocation. Singapore had adapted procedures in a cavalier fashion, covering windows only partially and renaming blackouts, brownouts. The town was full of swagger, and the confidence of constant government bulletins made alarmist thought impossible. Japanese reconnaissance flights, seen daily over the island, were accepted as defiant enemy bravado in the face of British strength. Singapore was impregnable.

Jenkins led Wilfred to an empty administrative hut and went off to find someone to show him about the camp. Left alone, Wilfred walked over to the netted window to stare out at the drilling men. A pile of leaflets was stacked nearby and picking one up he read a Whitehall War Office instruction for non-technical methods of dealing with enemy tanks. Jenkins soon returned with a young private behind him, and nodded sadly when he saw what Wilfred was reading.

‘That's the kind of nonsense they send us from Whitehall. They might need tanks in the desert, but what would we do with them here? How would a tank get through 700 miles of Malayan jungle? That jungle is our best defence; those Japs will never get through it,' Jenkins stated.

After lunch rain came down, making a muddy lake of the parade ground. An army mess meal of fish curry and rice repeated unpleasantly on Wilfred as, his tour of the camp finished, he waited about for transport back to Singapore. In the late afternoon a jeep was found, and Wilfred climbed in next to the driver. Once more the bumpy road stretched ahead and the deep rich scent of the jungle steamed under the sun. The power of this impenetrable world filled Wilfred just as it had when he was a child. The rubber plantation on which he had been born could not be far away, he guessed, and on occasions his parents had visited Singapore, taking him with them. Such shadowy memories were always creeping up on him. The jeep rattled on as the sun mellowed; shadows were everywhere now, deepening between the trees. He knew that the reason he was here, the force that had propelled
him so far across the ocean, was the need to enter again that distant place of childhood, the safety he had found under the dark leaves of the old swing on the mango tree. He thought of Cynthia, her burnished skin, the dark bruise of her mouth, her pale cat's eyes, and the earthy essence of her filled him. When he took Cynthia in his arms the taste of her lips beneath his own seemed full of a world he had lost.

Soon they crossed the Causeway back on to the island but found the road ahead was flooded after the rain. The driver turned on to an alternative route that ran along the north-west coastline where beaches were gripped by the giant claws of mangroves. Coconut palms, seaside shrubs, mango and wild nutmeg grew everywhere. The tide was out and the gaunt, tangled roots of the mangroves stood in menacing shadow under the setting sun.

After some distance the driver stopped the jeep to relieve himself and Wilfred walked off down a path to the beach. Atop their stilts fishermen's huts were crowded together on one side of the sandy cove. The spindly timbers of the fishing
kelong
stretched out into the sea; small boats were already setting out for the night, lanterns swinging on poles. A cool breeze blew upon him. Across the water, a short distance away, lay the Malay Peninsula. As he surveyed the empty beach, Wilfred was filled with unease. He saw that these northern Singapore beaches lay open to attack; no pillboxes, guns or landmines, no searchlights – not even the deterrent of barbed wire stood as fortification against an enemy landing. He remembered his interview with Brigadier Simson who, to the annoyance of Jenkins's ‘top brass', held an opinion contrary to all others.

‘In my view the jungle is not impassable for determined infantry, even during the monsoon. Our troops are not trained for jungle warfare, nor do we possess any tanks, for they are not thought to be necessary. Any defences we have are built entirely to meet a seaward attack. If an attack were to come from the north, Singapore could by no means be called an impregnable fortress.'

Wilfred stood on the darkening beach and remembered Simson's words. Across the water the lights on the mainland already lit up the night.

A few days later, Wilfred awoke with a start at night, and was surprised to find he was sitting upright in bed. The air raid siren was wailing,
and the clock on the table registered 4.30 in the morning. The sheets lay smooth and untouched on Cynthia's side of the bed; she was on night duty again at the hospital and had left the evening before. Although he had not panicked during previous air raid alerts, Wilfred jumped out of bed and crawled under the desk a few feet away. There had never been an air raid practice after dark or this early in the morning. It was 8 December and Wilfred thought the alarm might be the grand practice the government had threatened for so long; it had been forecast that this dress rehearsal for war might come in the first week of the month, leaving everyone free to enjoy the rest of the festive season. Crouched in the narrow kneehole beneath the desk and looking up at the window, Wilfred could see the half-moon against a black sky. He had thrown the shutters back the night before, pushing aside the blackout cloth. As the siren faded away, he felt the ridiculousness of being squashed beneath the desk and eased himself out. The low drone of aircraft could already be heard. Thin fingers of searchlight thrust into the sky, illuminating formations of bombers like polished studs on a dark cloth. In the sweeping lights he could make out the red sun of Japan on the bodies of the planes. Silhouetted against the pale cup of the moon, the planes flew on across the island. The drone of the engines became fainter as Wilfred waited for them to disappear into a bank of cloud over the sea. Instead, there was the distant crack of anti-aircraft fire. The planes flew beyond the reach of the guns and in reply began to drop a litter of bombs. Picked out by the searchlights, the silver flecks fell in the planes' wake, like a shower of confetti. Wilfred heard a muffled thudding and saw bursts of fiery light. The aircraft flew on and disappeared at last. The sky was now a deep pink over the area where the General Hospital was situated.

All Wilfred could think of was Cynthia. Under his hand the window frame still radiated the heat of the day, the paint flaking and uneven. In the dark garden the usual boom of bullfrogs echoed through the night, crickets continued their incessant whirr and the smell of night flowers came to him. Everything was as before, yet he sensed a line had been crossed and nothing would be the same again.

He pulled on some clothes and ran from the room. The hallway of Belvedere was in darkness but he heard a cough and sounds of breathing. A torch was switched on and he saw several of the lodgers crouched under the stairs. Wilfred strode on down the corridor towards
Rose's room. On the way he passed Boffort, who stood in the doorway of the large room he now occupied with his wife Valerie.

‘What's up?' Boffort enquired, stifling a yawn as he pulled on a dressing gown. Valerie peered anxiously over his shoulder, her hair wound on metal curlers.

‘The Japs have dropped bombs,' Wilfred said over his shoulder as he hurried past.

‘Not possible,' Boffort shouted after him. ‘It must be that big practice air raid they've threatened. Don't be taken in.'

The door to Rose's room was open and Howard was already with his mother, helping a confused Rose up from where she had hidden under the bed. She brushed dust from her pink smocked nightdress; grey hair straggled over her shoulders, and a cobweb trailed from her head. Wilfred hesitated, embarrassed to see his mother-in-law in this dishevelled state, but Rose seemed unaware, reaching for a dressing gown and wrapping it quickly about herself, picking the web from her hair.

‘They've dropped bombs near the hospital; they must be aiming for the docks and Chinatown. I'm going to Cynthia,' Wilfred said from the doorway, and Rose hurried forward in concern.

‘Why did the
Prince of Wales
not shoot them down?' Rose gripped Wilfred's arm, refusing to let go. She remembered the great guns she had seen just days before, and Ordnance Seaman Jefferies striding about the huge ship.

‘Right now the battleships are steaming up the peninsula to get rid of Japanese transports sighted off Indo-China,' Wilfred told her impatiently as he pulled himself free.

‘Practice or real raid, I'd better get to the Air Raid Precaution station,' Howard said, tucking his shirt into his trousers. Although he had volunteered for ARP duties these were only in the day: the post shut down at night as no one expected a real raid, least of all after dark.

Howard ran behind Wilfred up the corridor, buckling his belt into place. They made their way to the gardener's shed where a couple of bicycles were always kept, then pushed them hurriedly down the drive towards the gate. They parted to cycle off in opposite directions, Howard towards his Air Raid Precaution centre and Wilfred to the hospital.

As Howard passed the old rain tree on the corner and turned out
on to Bukit Timah, he slowed to a halt, craning his neck for a glimpse of Bougainvillaea House between the dark shapes of the trees. Mei Lan had come back from Hong Kong the week before; Rama the gardener had told him. She had been away for more than a year, and during that time he had heard nothing from her. He had written each day but she had not replied to a single letter. When Rama gave him the news of Mei Lan's return, he had gone down to the canal and played his saxophone in the hope that she might hear. Now, looking up at the sky in fear of more bombs, Howard saw a dim light in Bougainvillaea House, and felt again the pain of Mei Lan's rejection.

The night was warm, and Wilfred pedalled furiously, head down, the breeze rushing against his ears. As he drew near the town the air was heavy with sulphurous fumes, and his panic grew. The leafy roads about Belvedere were dark and silent with only an occasional street lamp, but here he saw there was no blackout and streetlights blazed everywhere. People had come out of their houses to watch the air raid, and were running about excitedly.

As Wilfred neared the hospital the mournful shriek of the all-clear siren was heard at last. Wounded people, all poor residents of Chinatown, packed the hospital driveway, and a queue of ambulances carrying bomb victims added to the chaos. Propping the bike against a wall, Wilfred forced his way through the crowd into the Admissions Room. Almost immediately he saw Cynthia on the far side of the room, bent over an old Chinese woman with a bloodied limb, and relief flooded through him. He caught her eye but she waved him away, too busy to give him attention. Returning outside he sat down on a low wall, lighting a cigarette with trembling hands, drawing on it gratefully. Above the black silhouettes of trees the sky was alight with fiery reflection. He could not believe what was happening. Just as he had feared, just as Brigadier Simson had forecast, war had begun.

For Cynthia the unexpected sight of Wilfred across the crowded room was the comfort she needed: it meant Belvedere was safe. It was difficult to know exactly what had happened, except that Chinatown had been bombed. Even without the present emergency, it had been a bad week. The last few days she had been on the children's wards, where there was an excess of tuberculosis. Although they wheeled these children out into the gardens, it was difficult to see what good this did
in the swamp-like climate of Singapore. Many of the new-born babies had contracted tetanus from unsanitary conditions while the umbilical cord was being cut, and when they died she had to accompany their bodies to the mortuary. A number of nurses had succumbed to the current wave of malaria sweeping the town, leaving the hospital short staffed, and Cynthia had been shunted from one ward to another. For a while she had been on the First Class ward to which only Europeans were admitted and where the nursing staff were predominantly British. The most difficult thing there was dealing with the lewd comments of a sick Scottish sea captain. In that elite ward, patients presented nurses with chocolates and champagne, and staff dined on extra roast pigeon and lamb chops in the ward kitchens. The Second Class Asiatic wards were clean and orderly, but it was the crowded Third Class wards that Cynthia hated. They were for the poor who lacked concepts of hygiene and, as the beds were free, there was not the same standard of cleanliness. The nursing staff on these wards were all local women, and it was here Cynthia spent most of her time.

Now blood was all around her and in the midst of hysteria she must remain calm. The badly wounded were lined up on trolleys in the corridor near the operating theatre. For the first time she saw what shrapnel could do, the terrible fractures, burns and maiming; the wounds were unlike anything she had seen before.