The Empire Trilogy (166 page)

‘Why don't you get off your behind and do something to help,' Walter shouted at him roughly as he passed. Monty stirred uncomfortably but evidently could think of no way in which he could improve on what was being done already, for presently he sank back again. Monty, the Major noticed, like himself had been allotted a rôle in the counter-parade which was to accompany the paradé proper, harassing it symbolically to represent the pitfalls that a thriving business might have to face in its passage over the years; as a matter of fact, the Major was quite looking forward to tormenting plump and cheerful little Kate with his toasting-fork, though he could see no real reason why inflation should carry a toasting-fork at all. Monty's costume came no closer than the Major's to suggesting the part that he was to portray: it consisted of an old striped swimming-costume with shoulder straps, striped football socks rolled right up his hairy thighs and a fanged mask which bore a disturbing coincidental resemblance to General Percival: at the moment this mask and an inflated bladder tied to a stick lay on the ground beside him; the final and most frightening touch in Monty's costume were the awe-inspiring, curved talons which had been grafted on to a pair of batting-gloves for the occasion. Walter had alloted Monty the rôle of Crippling Overheads in the parade and had refused all his requests for a more heroic part.

The Major was now gazing with misgiving at one or two of the other floats which Walter, his spirits reviving a little, was showing him (Matthew had sloped off for a chat with Kate and perhaps was even hoping to make it up with Joan). Despite all the difficulties and postponements, Walter was saying, certain advances had been made in Blackett and Webb's preparations: it would be a great shame, and the most bitter of disappointments to him personally, if the jubilee should ‘for one reason or another' now fail to take place. These advances, the Major had to agree, were considerable: four of the vans which had been set aside for the jubilee had already been crowned with the harnesses of wooden spars and metal brackets on which would be placed, when the time came, the floats which the committee had decided upon; other harnesses and floats were still under construction here and there, and in due course other vans would be temporarily commandeered to support them. Here was the towering dome-shaped head of the octopus which, instead of the more usual lion, had been selected to symbolize Singapore herself: this octopus, smiling genially, had been fitted out with amazingly lifelike rubber tentacles specially made for the occasion in Blackett and Webb's local workshops with the participation of local craftsmen ‘of all races' (as Walter explained). The advantage of rubber for this purpose, he went on, was that it was flexible and the ends of tentacles which were twisted normally into rings could be pulled open to allow someone to be ‘captured' in a friendly grip: in this way young women with banners proclaiming them to be Shanghai, Hong Kong, Batavia, Saigon and so forth could walk along beside the float and appear to writhe in the tentacles, which would fit round their necks, in ‘a very naturalistic manner'. An elegant solution to the problem, as the Major must agree.

Next to the octopus came another float with eight more arms, this time human. These arms, immensely long, stretched forward over the cab of the van which was to carry them, and had been painted variously dark brown, light brown, yellow and white to represent the four races of Malaya stretching out side by side to reach for prosperity above massive signboards reading, in Tamil, Malay, Chinese and English: ALL IN IT TOGETHER.

‘Wouldn't it be better if it read simply “All together” or “All working together”?' suggested the Major. ‘It seems to me that there's something a bit odd about “all
in it
together”.'

‘Oh, I don't think so, no,' replied Walter vaguely. ‘It seems all right to me … Not inside the bloody van, you idiot,
on top of it
!' he added in an indignant howl at an impassive Chinese carpenter who was trying to drag a large sign bearing the words ‘Continuity in Prosperity' into the driving seat of one of the vans.

‘Still no sign of the rest of the so-and-sos who said they'd come!' Walter inspected his watch, looking defenceless all of a sudden. ‘Well, come on, we'll give them another few minutes and then if they haven't turned up we'll call it a day.'

They walked on. A pink-faced youth, one of Blackett and Webb's younger executives, hurried up with some problem for Walter. After a hasty conference Walter said: ‘if you don't mind, Major, this young man will show you the rest. I'll be with you again in a few minutes.' He strode away, summoning an Indian secretary with a clipboard to accompany him. Once he was out of sight the prospective participants in the parade relaxed visibly.

The Major, with the pink-faced young man at his side, now found himself standing in front of Prosperity herself, depicted by sandwich boards as long as the van which was to carry them and twice as high. These boards had been skillfully painted to imitate Straits dollar bills, enormously magnified: on one side the blue one-dollar, on the other the red ten-dollar, and both with the oval portrait of the King which you would find on the currency itself, beautifully painted to show every detail of his wavy hair and high ceremonial collar, though perhaps with eyes more slanted than usual, for this, too, was the work of a Chinese artist. ‘Blackett and Webb 1892-1942. Fifty Years of Prosperity for Workers of All Races.'

‘I hope you approve, Major Archer,' said the young man politely. ‘We in the Firm happen to think it's a rather valuable contribution.'

‘I must say,' said the Major dubiously, ‘that I wonder whether this is quite the moment to go in for all this sort of thing.

But no! didn't the Major see that it was precisely now that such a jubilee parade was needed, now more than at any other moment in the history of the Colony?

They had moved on to yet another float in the form of a crown composed of vertical wooden laths painted silver to simulate metal and tipped with arrowheads. This float, which was entitled ‘The Blackett and Webb Group of Companies', also carried the slogans ‘Continuity in Prosperity' and ‘All in it Together'. The Major paused, fascinated, for behind the bars of the crown, as if in a cage, were a number of rather sulky-looking young women with marcelled hair and bright red lipstick wearing glittering silver lamé dresses. Each of these women was evidently intended to represent one of Blackett and Webb's interests for although their dresses were identical they wore a variety of silk sashes proclaiming ‘Shipping', ‘Insurance', ‘Import-Export', ‘Rubber', ‘Engineering', ‘Pineapple Canning', ‘Entrepôt' and a great many more. The Major, eyeing this float, was recalling uneasily his conversation with Matthew about how Blackett and Webb controlled the rubber companies under its management by means of incestuous investment, when the young women on the float spotted his companion; they appeared to recognize him for they crowded to the bars of the crown and began to shout abuse, including certain expressions which the Major was surprised to hear coming from such attractive young ladies. ‘When you give us bloody-damn money?' they shrieked at him, among other things. ‘We waiting here all bloody-damn afternoon!'

The young executive, however, blushing furiously, averted his gaze and hurried the Major along, explaining in an undertone that these young women had possibly been ‘a bit of a mistake': they were a singing group called the Da Sousa Sisters temporarily stranded in Singapore for want of nightclub engagements. Although the terms of their employment in Blackett and Webb's jubilee parade had been carefully explained to them in advance, it had turned out that they had expected a certain amount of special treatment as ‘professional artistes'. However, he went on, panting slightly, what he had been about to say was that the important thing was
continuity
in the Colony's prosperity. All races must realize that there was no earthly use in a long period of poverty followed by a quick and unreliable fortune, like a big win at roulette. That sort of thing got a country nowhere! What you wanted was a slow and steady enrichment over the years … the very thing, as it happened, that firms like Blackett and Webb had been supplying for the past fifty years or more. While he was enlarging excitedly on this aspect of prosperity, using expressions like ‘infrastructure' and ‘economic spread' which, however, only served to numb the Major's brain, an air-raid siren sounded. Some moments of chaos followed. Men dashed here and there. Steel helmets were clapped on. Some people peered apprehensively at the sky, others dived for shelter. The Da Sousa Sisters set up a terrible shrieking to be let out of the crown in which they were imprisoned. ‘I suppose we'll have to let them out,' muttered the young executive, ‘but I don't know how we'll ever get them back.' But already Monty was unfastening the door of their cage in an effort to ingratiate himself, though not before ‘Import-Export' had taken off one of her shoes to join ‘Wireless and Electrical' in hammering on the bars. The Major's companion dragged him hurriedly towards a makeshift shelter, more, it seemed, for protection from the Da Sousa Sisters who were now running loose than from possible bombs.

In due course the Major found himself crouching down in a sort of igloo made of rubber bales which was the nearest approach that could be devised to an air-raid shelter; while he crouched there democratically with ‘workers of all races' he noticed that his companion had clapped on a steel helmet. The Major regretted that he had not brought his own helmet: clearly it could not have been expected to fit over his horns. Never mind, it was too late to do anything about it now! Nevertheless, while the young executive began to explain that by ‘infrastructure' he meant such things as roads, railways and other services which, though they do not produce wealth
themselves
, are crucial to its production in the long run, not least by enticing investment from overseas, the Major continued to finger his horns uncertainly, wishing that he had not been such a bally fool. He had not brought his gas-mask either.

But, the young man went on, you could not build roads and railways on a ‘here today, gone tomorrow' basis … for such investments you need a steady volume of trade over a number of years! That was the substance of the magic phrase ‘continuity in prosperity' which, as the Major had no doubt noticed, was painted everywhere in Chinese as well as English characters.

Would it not have been better, though, replied the Major, if both vans and workers of all races had been employed on the more urgent tasks of, say, preventing Singapore from burning to the ground, repairing the bomb damage or unloading the ships which lay in the docks with cargoes of urgently needed ammunition and supplies?

After all, it was absurd that soldiers who were needed to man the defences should have to unload these ships because the labour force had decamped to build Blackett and Webb's floats. But even as the Major spoke there came the crump of exploding bombs from the direction of Keppel Harbour and he was obliged to admit that the labour force, ill-paid as it was, and without adequate air-raid shelters, would most likely have decamped anyway, and one could hardly blame them. At length, the ‘all clear' sounded and the Major crawled stiffly out of the rubber igloo and got to his feet. It was time he was getting back to the Mayfair in case his services should be needed.

But there was still something that the young man from Blackett and Webb wanted to show him before he went and the Major, protesting weakly, allowed himself to be diverted towards one or two floats which had been designed to portray the social benefits which had attended these fifty years of successful commerce. Here was a papier mâché teacher beside a gigantic blackboard on which was written in the usual languages ‘All in it together' and these small grey lumps which had still to be painted severally in dark brown, light brown, yellow and …

‘Yes, of course, “children of all races”,' said the Major who was getting the hang of it by now.

‘And this figure on a horse which is meant to be a sort of Chinese Saint George is using his lance to kill … no, not a dragon, the Chinese are rather fond of dragons … but a hookworm, very much magnified, of course. But now, and this is what I really wanted you to see, we come to the most ambitious float of all from a technical point of view … though it doesn't look much, I agree, until you see it working. Yes, it represents a symbolical rubber tree … It had to be symbolical because real rubber trees look so uninteresting … producing wealth for all races. If you look closely, Major, you'll see that a hole representing the cut made by the tapper's knife has been made in the bark. Now when I pull this switch here liquid gold pours out into this basin …'

‘Liquid gold?'

‘Well, actually, its just coloured water … now what's the matter. Oh, I see, the pump's not plugged in. Here we go!' He pulled the switch and the tree began to spurt noisily into the basin.

‘It looks as if it's … well …' said the Major.

‘Yes, I'm afraid it does rather. But it was the best we could do. At first we tried a little conveyor belt inside the trunk which kept spilling coins through the opening in the bark and that looked fine, but the blighters kept pinching the coins. Still, it wasn't a bad idea.' He sighed and looked momentarily discouraged. ‘Anyway, don't you agree that once we get this jubilee parade on the road it should make it clear to everyone what they will have to lose by exchanging us for the Japanese?'

There was an area of unusually dense jungle in that part of the Slim River region where General Percival had decided that a stand must be made if southern Malaya were to be given the time to prepare its defences: it lay a little to the north of the village and rubber plantation at Trolak where, incidently, one branch of the river flowed under a bridge. To cross this stretch of dense jungle both the trunk road and the railway were obliged to squeeze together and run side by side through a narrow defile which resembled the unusually long neck of a bottle. If the Japanese tanks were to continue their southward advance they would have no alternative but to come through this narrow defile. But just beyond its long neck the bottle opened out into the wider chamber (more like a decanter than a bottle) of the Klapa Bali rubber estate and of Trolak village. If the Japanese tanks once managed to pass through that long neck and get loose among the rubber trees, well … then there would be no stopping them. The only chance then, perhaps, might be to delay them by demolishing the bridge at Trolak and the Slim River Bridge some five miles down the road. And so, demolition charges had been set against these bridges, just in case.