The Empire Trilogy (155 page)

It is unusual to see someone running in the tropics; now and then Europeans, in defiance of the heat, may be seen playing football, cricket or some other sport, but not running the way Dupigny was (as if his life depended upon it, as perhaps it did). People turned to stare at him as he raced back the way he had come towards the ruined walls and grassy banks of Fort Cornwallis. At first he shouted at them, but they paid no attention to him; he decided immediately it was useless, a waste of breath, so he ran on in silence, passing a Chinese ARP warden who realized immediately why he was running and started shouting wildly at a little group of Indians nearby, trying to marshal them in one direction or another. Although he tried to point in the direction of what was approaching from the mainland as he ran, it made no difference: one or two of the strollers even grinned at each other at the sight of a middleaged European running for all he was worth in the steaming midday heat. Now Dupigny paid no attention to them, hardly even saw them. He ran and ran and, wiry though he was, the sweat poured off his face and neck.

Here and there the crowds were so dense that there was hardly room to move, but Dupigny shoved people rudely aside in his determination to get where he was going, too breathless to apologize, though again he tried to point across the water. One or two of those he shoved aside shouted angrily after him; nobody cares to be barged into the gutter while taking a stroll. An elderly English gentleman shook a walking-stick after him: this was the sort of ill-mannered fellow one found coming out East in recent years: not enough breeding to wrap in a postage stamp! But still Dupigny ran and ran for his life. There was an expression of fierce concentration on his face as he ran, looking neither right nor left, head down, elbows working. The sole of one of his shoes, which he had been obliged by poverty to wear ever since leaving Saigon and which he had been nursing anxiously for some weeks, now detached itself and began to flap ridiculously. But he did not even stop to attend to this, merely kicked the shoe off as he was running because already, above the thudding of his own pulse in his ears, he could hear the drone of the approaching bombers.

As he drew near the corner of Light Street where the seafront turned towards the fort and the esplanade, the crowds became thinner and several people were looking up at the sky, their attention drawn by the steadily increasing sound of motors. One or two of them, concerned as much to see Dupigny running as by the thought that these approaching aeroplanes might be a source of danger quickened their pace, but with the air of people who do not want to be thought ridiculous. Dupigny ran on with open mouth and staring eyes, for now it seemed to him that he was running in a dream and in semi-darkness through which there penetrated, wriggling into his consciousness like little silver worms, the sound of ARP whistles, followed by the undulating wail of the siren from the roof of the police station.

He was no more than sixty yards from the protection of the green banks of earth by the fort but moving in slow motion. He ran and ran but the fort seemed to come no closer; the muscles of his thighs no longer obeyed him. Half-way across the intervening open space he stumbled and fell on the gravel. He could no longer hear the engines but looking up at last he saw that one of the bombers flying very low was almost on top of him and appeared to be hovering over him like a bird of prey, blotting out the sun. Getting to his feet he staggered forward again in desperation and finding himself on the edge of a grassy bank of earth he hurled himself over it and tumbled head over heels down and down into the shady depths of a gully full of sand and stones. And as he did so he was followed by a great tidal wave of sound that swept over his head and tore savagely at the flag hanging limply from the flag-staff a few yards away.

He lay there quaking for some moments with his head in his hands, flinching as one aeroplane after another roared overhead, each one followed by a series of resonant explosions which shook the ground and created a miniature landslide of pebbles a few inches in front of his nose. Simultaneously with the explosions there came what might have been the pattering of fingernails on a metal table, very thin and trivial compared with the violent beating of big drums and the grinding of masonry. Machine-guns!

Again and again he heard the crump of falling bombs. Some of them fell very close, and with each bomb there was the same dreadful shudder of the earth and a trickle of gravel by his face. A spider, horribly agile, galloped away in a panic. When he looked up he could see that the godowns along Swettenham and Victoria Piers were blazing briskly and beyond, on the peaceful and shining waters towards the mainland, smoke was rising from several of the anchored vessels, swelling from slender trunks into canopies that hung over them, giving them the appearance of monstrous elms.

For some minutes, while he recovered a little from the effort he had made, he lay where he was, thinking of nothing; then he climbed unsteadily out of his refuge. Without considering where he was going, though perhaps with some dazed notion that he might escape from this catastrophe by taking the electric tram which ran from the railway jetty along the Dato Kramat Road to Ayer Itam Village, he began to wander back the way he had come. But, of course, such an escape was out of the question: even if there had been anyone left to drive a tram the tracks were cratered and the overhead wires lay tangled on the ground amid the rubble of masonry.

Despite the crackle of burning buildings and the shouts and screams of those who had been injured, to Dupigny it suddenly seemed very quiet as he retraced his steps towards the Railway Jetty. It seemed that it was only a moment earlier that he had been running in the opposite direction; yet of the crowds through which he had had to force his way there was no sign: they had melted away mysteriously leaving only, dotted on the pavement here and there, bundles of clothes: from many of these bundles, however, blood was flowing.

One of the bundles was of pure white muslin and from it there issued such a lake of blood that Dupigny found himself marvelling that the human body could contain that quantity. He was obliged to make a considerable detour to avoid splashing through it, which, considering that he had lost one shoe, he believed he might find disagreeable. But even the sight of the blood nauseated him and he was obliged to shift his gaze to something more comforting: in the event this was the smoke pouring prettily out of the window of a burning building across the street.

He took a closer look. This time he noticed that the smoke did not have a long slender trunk and a canopy like an elm, as with the ships burning in the anchorage, but a short, fat stalk like a cauliflower. And also like a cauliflower this smoke seemed quite green below, billowing out into white flowerets above. Someone was shouting at him from the window.

No. There was someone at the window but she was dead, hanging out of it with gracefully trailing arms in the manner of someone in a rowing-boat idly trailing fingers in the water. At the same time there was someone shouting at him from the road: a short, fat man with no neck: his red, flustered face appeared to be set directly on his shoulders, his arms emerging from just below his ears.

‘Come on, now, I want you to take care of me,' he was shouting. ‘You'll have to shift things so that I can drive my car. Come on. Yes, you. You're the only person here so you'll have to do.' He was standing beside a little Ford without a windscreen. As Dupigny made no move he added pleadingly: ‘There's a good fellow. You aren't going to leave me in the lurch, are you? Those bloody bombers may come back any minute.'

‘Very well,' said Dupigny and having brushed the glass from the front seat he got in beside the fat man, who said: ‘No, no. You must crank!' and produced a starting-handle which he handed to Dupigny. Dupigny got out again and with much difficulty found the hole in which to insert the end of the starting-handle. ‘Ready?' But he could barely see the man in the driving-seat for the smoke which was drifting around them from the burning building nearby.

The motor fired immediately and Dupigny got back into the car. As he did so he noticed that a picture advertising a round tin of Capstan cigarettes had been painted on the side of the vehicle. ‘Do you have a cigarette, please?' he asked, but there was no reply. They set off jerkily down the road following the tram-lines, weaving in and out between craters, bodies and rubble … in places, because of the drifting smoke, it was impossible to see what lay ahead. The fat man drove, muttering to himself and tears cascaded down his plump cheeks, but whether they were caused by grief, alarm or simply the smoke it was impossible to say. Now their way was blocked by a mess of twisted girders and high-tension wires. The fat man peered ahead uncertainly.

‘Drive up on the pavement.'

‘But that is against the law,' said the fat man unhappily. ‘We must go back.'

‘Drive on the pavement,' repeated Dupigny harshly, ‘or we'll never get out of this place. Go forward. I see where you can cross the storm-drain.'

They drove on, managing with inches to spare to find a way through. Looking to his right Dupigny searched for some sign of life from the fire station in Chulia Street but all he could see was the unbroken curtain of smoke: perhaps the station itself had been hit. Turning inland to follow Maxwell Road they saw that a hysterical crowd had gathered around the dead and wounded in the market, which itself was a shambles in which carcasses of animals and humans had become indistinguishable.

‘We'll never get through there,' whimpered the fat man. ‘They'll kill us like dogs.'

‘Don't be stupid. Drive up Magazine Road instead. It looks more clear.'

At a junction with another road they crossed over the tramlines again. Here there was not so much damage and the overhead cables had not been brought down. Macalister Road was crowded with excited people but otherwise the way was clear. Presently they turned north, then west on to Burmah Road. Now they found themselves in almost deserted countryside. ‘Where are we going?' Dupigny wondered.

Suddenly the fat man stamped on the brake pedal and the car drifted sideways, locked tyres screaming, until it came to a halt by some sugar cane. Dupigny could see no reason for stopping. The road ahead was empty. But the fat man had bounded out of the car and with his little arms working vigorously on his rotund body he scurried across the road and plunged into the sugar cane. The foliage swallowed him immediately and he gave no further sign of life.

‘
Ah!
' Dupigny now saw why he had taken to his heels. A two-engined Mitsubishi bomber had crept into view following the coastline in a westerly direction but already beginning to turn inland towards the stalled motor-car where Dupigny was sitting. It was flying very slowly and very low. He could see every detail of it. Its wing dipped and it began to turn on a wide curve that would bring it back over George Town and the shipping once more. Dupigny sat there too tired to move and watched the nose of the aeroplane coming towards him, looking, he thought, like the cruel head of a pike. For a moment he could see the four bomb-doors under the belly of the plane and one wheel, half tucked into its undercarriage like an acorn in its cup. Now its camouflaged surface was hard to follow against the dark green flank of Penang Hill but then, as it banked more steeply, the underneath of the plane was eclipsed and the sunlight flared first on one facet of the glass cockpit, then on another, to be picked up in turn by the machine-gun turret just above and behind the wing; as the glare died Dupigny saw the dark silhouette of the gunner's head and of the gun itself with its barrel swivelling and he realized that the pilot was banking to give the gunner a view of the ground. Now he, too, felt like running for the sugar cane but he knew it was too late: he sat perfectly still, hoping that the gunner would think the car was abandoned. The bomber came curving nearer, only a few feet above the church and market at Pulau Tikus and the rooftops along Cantonment Road. Dust and gravel spurted from the road and seemed to hang there printed on his retina like a formation of stalagmites. A great roar of engines and a draught of wind rocked the car and then the plane had passed over, leaving him with a singing in his ears. Silence fell again. Nothing stirred. Dupigny continued to sit there where he was. In the glove compartment there was a tin of Capstan cigarettes and a box of matches. Dupigny lit one and waited. There was no sign of the fat man.

After he had finished the cigarette, he put the gear lever in neutral and got out the starting-handle again. When the motor was running he sounded the horn, waited for a while, then drove away, thinking that he might find some sheltered and isolated place to stay until the ‘all clear' sounded. He was obliged to drive slowly because in the absence of a windscreen he could not see properly. Soon, however, he was on the coast road to Tanjong Bungah. Several civilian cars, an Army lorry and a bren-gun carrier passed him, driving quickly in the direction of George Town. He saw a sign then for the Swimming Club and turned off the road into some trees on the right, parking the car in the shade of one of them.

The Swimming Club's doors and shutters were open but it seemed deserted except for a frightened looking Chinese at the bar. Dupigny ordered a beer and told the boy to serve it on the verandah. While he was waiting he paused to examine a couple of framed photographs on the wall. One of them, dating from about 1910 to judge by the clothes, showed the ladies and gentlemen of the Penang Swimming Club attending what was evidently an annual prize-giving. The ladies, wearing long dresses and broad-brimmed Edwardian hats swagged with silk and taffeta, sat demurely in the foreground beside a small table laden with silver cups and trophies. The gentlemen, meanwhile, were disposed in studied little groups here and there at the windows and on the verandah of the club-house, suggesting the crowd-scene of a musical comedy when the members of the chorus in the background talk to each other with animation, roar with laughter or slap their thighs with delight … but all in silence, while some other matter is being dealt with by the leading players in the foreground. ‘Ah, what a great deal can change even in a place like Penang in thirty years!'