The Empire Trilogy (187 page)

‘We should still make it all right. The boat doesn't sail till one o'clock. We can always walk if the worst comes to the worst.'

It took several minutes before there was even an opening that allowed them to pull into the line of traffic crawling along Collyer's Quay; then, for long stretches, they were obliged to stop altogether. Sometimes they discovered the reason for these delays, a car that had overheated or run out of petrol perhaps; then they would overtake a demented man peering at his engine in a cloud of steam, or a weeping woman sitting by herself with a pile of luggage, while those behind cursed and hooted at her to get her car out of the way.

‘This is dreadful.' The Major's face grew increasingly grim as the minutes ticked by. Presently a whole hour had fled. They still had not reached the shell of the Sailor's Institute at the end of Anson Road.

‘Perhaps they'll delay the time of sailing.' But this, Matthew knew, was unlikely for if the
Félix Roussel
was to escape the Japanese bombers she would have to be well on her way from Singapore before dawn.

For some time now they had been following a large open Bentley which contained a party of elegantly dressed young ladies sitting on pigskin suitcases plastered with gaily coloured steamer and hotel labels. Since it was already quite dark and all street-lights had been extinguished in accordance with the blackout regulations there only remained the Buick's papered-over headlights to cast a faint glow on the party travelling in front. But from time to time a match would flare as a cigarette was lit … (it appeared that the young ladies in the Bentley had no inhibitions about smoking in public) … then a cheerful little scene would be briefly illuminated, for to celebrate their departure from Singapore the ladies had brought two or three bottles of champagne and some glasses. And so, while another hour went by, the grim party from the Mayfair, with their doomed little dog sitting on the front seat, sat and watched the beautifully marcelled tresses in front of them and listened to the clink of glasses and the giggles, shrieks and popping of corks. Presently it occurred to the Major that there was something familiar about the Bentley.

‘Isn't that one of Walter's cars?'

‘I've been wondering the same thing. But what are those young women doing in it? There's something familiar about them, too. But it surely can't be Walter driving, nor his
syce
either, come to that.' The driver, whoever it was, remained invisible slumped far down in the seat in a manner which by contrast with the exuberance of his companions, was almost furtive.

‘I have an idea it's that singing team,' said the Major, ‘the Da Sousa Sisters … the girls Walter wanted to have in his jubilee procession. He must have arranged for someone to take them to the boat in his car.'

After a while, in support of this theory as to their identity the young women sitting on their luggage in the back of the Bentley put their marcelled heads together and their arms round each other's shoulders and began to sing:

Singapore, hulloa, hulloa!
In silk and satin and boa
We are the girlies from Goa!

The Major was too preoccupied, however, to be greatly concerned with the identity of some tipsy young women in Walter's car. He was more worried by the glowing clock on the dashboard (had it stopped or was it a quarter-past eleven already?). It was true that they had now almost reached the corner of Trafalgar Street but the nearer they came to the docks the slower their progress. Now increasingly they found themselves halted in the same place for several minutes at a time. The heat, the exhaust fumes and the ever-present drifting smoke from burning buildings made it hard to breathe. Vera lay with her head slumped against the back of the seat, her eyes closed. The minute hand on the dashboard crept on.

In the car ahead of them as time went on the gaiety of the Da Sousa Sisters was replaced by a rather sullen silence: evidently they, too, were becoming anxious about reaching the boat in time. Soon a squabble erupted and they began to scream, either at each other or at their driver, it was hard to say. Then they began to shriek abuse at the car in front of them which for some reason was being abandoned by its passengers. Eventually the Bentley managed to pull round it and the column advanced a few more yards. On the sea side of the road a warehouse which had been damaged in an earlier raid had been left to burn, casting a red glow over the line of cars ahead and bringing an intolerable increase in the temperature for some distance round about. It now became clear that a number of the cars ahead had been abandoned and were blocking the road beyond redemption.

‘I think we'd better walk,' Matthew said. Vera said that she felt well enough to do so but it was obvious that the smoke, the heat and the fumes were making her feel ill.

‘You go ahead,' the Major said. ‘I'll see if I can get rid of the car and then come back and help.'

Matthew opened the door, threw out Vera's suitcase and helped her out into the road. As he was doing so The Human Condition suddenly sprang off the front seat into the darkness and vanished. ‘Hey! Come back!' called the Major feebly, but this was no time to worry about a lost dog. Matthew picked up Vera's suitcase and, supporting her as best he could, set off with her into the flickering night. As they were passing the Bentley another squabble suddenly broke out between the young ladies and their driver. It was clear that they considered him to be responsible for the traffic jam in which they found themselves.

‘You said you taking us to bloody boat!' they screamed. ‘You damn well better take us to bloody-damn boat, OK!'

‘Matthew!' called a despairing voice from the Bentley and Matthew stopped, peering at the car in astonishment, for there, slumped in the front seat, his face weirdly illuminated by the flickering light of the burning building nearby as if by infernal flames was Monty Blackett.

‘I say, you couldn't give me a hand with some of this luggage, could you, old man? It's so heavy I can't manage it all. Go on, be a sport!'

‘Impossible! I have all I can manage already.'

‘Look here, Matthew, there's a good fellow,' pleaded Monty in a more confidential tone, ‘these young ladies here, who are simply charming, by the way, will let us hide in their cabin till the boat has sailed, in return for helping them, I mean to say … We'll be in Bombay in two shakes and no one will be the wiser. And they'll probably let us have some fun with them into the bargain. It's our only chance. Don't be a chump! Singapore's done for! It's common knowledge. And I promised these girls that I'd get them on board, you know, and they'll be frightfully sticky if I don't! We just go on board saying we're helping them with their bags and stay there. Things are in such a mess that no one will know the difference!'

‘Sorry, Monty, I can't help you. But you're nearly there. I'm sure you'll make it. Goodbye.'

While Monty had thus been pleading for help two of the Da Sousa Sisters, who had begun to pummel him and pull his hair in their indignation, had desisted and fixed their glittering, anthracite eyes on Matthew, allowing their victim to make this last appeal. In the meantime, other Da Sousa Sisters had come hopping forward over the suitcases to perch like leather-winged harpies on the back of the seat, on the door at his side, and even on the windscreen, clutching on with long red fingernails and staring down at him with their cruelly glittering eyes, one or two of them already beginning to dribble from scarlet-lipsticked mouths.

‘Be a sport!' wailed Monty.

But Matthew was already on his way with Vera towards the distant P & O wharf. He looked back once, just in time to see Monty's flickering, terror-stricken features disappear under a tide of biting, scratching, hair-pulling Da Sousa Sisters. In a moment there was nothing to be seen but an inner circle of feeding marcelled heads and an outer circle of tight-skirted bottoms. ‘Poor Monty!' thought Matthew. ‘What a fate!' But he hurried on with Vera, for by now it was getting close to midnight and the
Félix Roussel
was due to sail in a little over an hour.

As they advanced they saw that the road was jammed, not only with empty cars but with all sorts of other objects as well. Clearly no one had taken seriously the instruction to bring only hand luggage. Household goods of all sorts had been abandoned with the cars that had been conveying them: tables, chairs, chests and boxes were to be seen strapped on to car roofs: rolled-up carpets poked through windows. In places, abandoned possessions had been disgorged into the road, which was gradually coming to take on the appearance of a nightmare furniture store: some of them had been dragged by their reluctant owners a little distance in the direction of the wharf; in other cases their owners had not yet been able to make up their minds to forsake them: here and there a man with bulging eyes and swelling veins could still be seen wrestling with some possession too precious to leave behind, a mahogany dining-table perhaps, or a set of carved Chinese chairs, while at his side his wife groaned under a heavy brass Buddha or some other such fearful fardel.

Matthew and Vera now began to find that the litter of furniture and packing-cases, trunks and suitcases had become so dense in places that there was nothing for it but to climb over. They found themselves having to squeeze between wardrobes or clamber over pianos, their path lit only by the distant light of burning buildings, now seeing themselves faintly reflected in long mirrors, now listening to the sobs and groans of shadowy figures on their knees by the wayside. On one dark stretch they found themselves crunching through a tea-set of finest bone china; in another, stopping to rest because Vera was tired, they groped their way to a chesterfield sofa and sat down on it without realizing that a man and his wife, one at each end, were still trying to trundle it towards the wharf.

At long last they began to near the dock gates and could even make out the funnels of the
Félix Roussel
silhouetted against the pink glow of the night. Suddenly a rickshaw loomed out of the darkness along Keppel Road in the jostling crowd that flowed towards Gate 3 and the Empire Dock. Matthew, astonished, just had time to glimpse Joan sitting in it amidst a pile of luggage while Ehrendorf, stripped to the waist and streaming with sweat, galloped onwards as best he could between the shafts. Unable, like Matthew and Vera, to get through in the car Ehrendorf had wanted to abandon it, but Joan had refused to leave her luggage, which included a number of valuable wedding-presents, a set of pewter mugs, bed-linen, material to be made up into curtains according to a colour scheme she had already devised for her first home, a canteen of solid silver and other things. What was to be done? Ehrendorf had happened to spot an abandoned rickshaw beside the road and now here he was, head down and gasping for breath, scattering people right and left as he charged for the open gates.

‘Darling! I was afraid you wouldn't get here in time,' cried a voice almost in Ehrendorf's ear. A pink-faced young man in a white linen suit and a trilby was addressing Joan. ‘I have someone keeping me a place near the front. I say, who's this johnnie?' he added, noticing at length that there was something unusual about Joan's rickshaw-wallah. For a moment Ehrendorf stared into the slightly popping blue eyes of his successful rival. Then a lock of blonde hair dropped like a curtain from Nigel's forehead and only one blue eye was visible. Nigel reached a hand to his brow and removed the offending lock, allowing the silky hair to sift through his fingers to the knuckle while he contemplated the half-naked Ehrendorf with distaste. Ehrendorf dropped the shafts of the rickshaw and reached for his shirt, murmuring: ‘I'll leave the rest to you, if you don't mind.' He hesitated a moment, examining Nigel without hostility. ‘What on earth can she see in a chap like this?' he asked himself in wonder … but then, women had appalling taste in men, he had always thought so. Without a further glance at Joan he slipped away, forcing his way back against the stream of people.

‘I say aren't you going to stay and help with the luggage?' came a faint, indignant voice following him through the darkness.

When at last Matthew and Vera had passed through the gates and saw the state of the quay, they looked at each other in dismay. Between where they stood and the narrow corridor through which the passengers were channelled there swayed a densely packed mass of people. Beyond, sat or stood half a dozen harassed officials examining tickets, remonstrating, copying names into a ledger, shouting, shrugging shoulders, looking impatient. Every now and then someone tore himself away from this dense mass and pursued his lonely way through the corridor then up the canvas-sided gang-plank to disappear at last into the looming vessel watched all the way by the boiling throng below. As Matthew and Vera thrust their way into the crowd they saw a woman make her way up to the ship's side sobbing with nervous exhaustion and dragging by the hand a little girl with a pretty, open face and with a ribbon in her hair, herself carrying a doll in a long infant's dress; behind walked a boy with a Meccano-set looking self-conscious and wearing a sun-helmet. After them there was nobody for a while, then Nigel and Joan, heavily laden with suitcases, made their way aboard and disappeared from view. Once, a powerful searchlight from the ship's superstructure was switched on, swept over the packed crowds on the quay for a moment, then died.

As the hour drew nearer one a.m. and signs of activity began to appear at the ship's side the crowd pressed forward more anxiously than ever. People shouted and waved tickets above their heads, hoping to attract the attention of the officials and let them know that ticket-holding passengers still remained on shore. The rate at which they were passing up the gang-plank hardly seemed to quicken, however, even though the officials must have realized that there was a danger of people being left on the quayside. Meanwhile, still later arrivals continued to flood in from behind, straining and pushing forward with all their might.