Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 4 January 1942
Australia Looks to America, Says Prime Minister Curtin
Prime Minister Curtin has announced that ‘Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom’. The Prime Minister said that the USA would be the cornerstone of Australia’s defence in the Pacific.
SINGAPORE, 11 JANUARY 1942
NANCY
The Raffles hummed even so late at night, though its exterior was dark, blackout curtains drawn to stop any sliver of light that might attract an enemy plane.
A uniformed footman opened their car door, ignoring the coating of mud; another collected their luggage, not even blinking at the mosquito nets and bedding. Nancy suspected that these days even guests at the Raffles arrived carrying odd assortments, or even possibly no luggage at all. Another man in livery helped her out, then slid into the driver’s seat to park the car.
A doorman opened the door with a subtle flourish. She stopped, entranced.
Polished wooden floors and Persian carpets; white-painted walls; green palms in bronze tubs; the scent of food, proper food, as well as the tang of spices; ceiling fans whirring; and somewhere nearby an orchestra played and people laughed.
They were expected. ‘Only one room, madam, I am so sorry. But with the city so crowded … And there are two beds, and a cot for the little one.’
Up in a grillwork, clanking lift; down a long corridor with dark panelling, the wood creaking under their feet. Their luggage preceded them to a bedroom with wide windows muffled in heavy curtains.
And beds. Two as promised, with starched white sheets …
‘Tea, madam?’
‘Please,’ said Moira.
The tea came while Moira was in the bathroom down the hall, a wheeled trolley with silver service: teapot, hot-water pot and thin china cups, a silver tea strainer, a plate of thin bread and butter, crustless watercress sandwiches, a covered dish which revealed steaming curry puffs and a platter of jam tarts.
Nancy settled Gavin on her knee and began to eat, slipping him crumbs of bread and butter, of jam tart.
The door opened. Moira, wrapped in a dressing gown, stared at her and sighed. ‘Heaven knows how I’ll get him back to a proper routine. And no jam tarts! Not at this time of night. He’ll take forever to settle.’
‘No, he won’t. He’s as tired as us. How are the bathrooms?’
‘Wonderful. So much hot water and, oh, the soap.’ Moira stretched out on the bed. The shadows under her eyes had turned to purple bruises. Nancy handed her a cup of tea and a plate of sandwiches.
‘I could sleep for a week,’ said Moira.
‘So could I.’ Nancy settled Gavin in the white-painted cot. He stared up at her and gave a sudden gummy grin. She grinned back, wondering why his expression was familiar, then realised it was hers, seen in the mirror every day.
Strange to think of this small person with her smile. Not Ben’s. Not Moira’s. Hers and Gran’s.
Both Moira and Gavin were asleep by the time she got back from the bathroom, clad in the silk dressing gown with dragons she hadn’t been able to bring herself to leave behind, clean for the first time since they had left Kuala Lumpur. The bed was not as soft as the princess’s in the fairytale. She slept deeply regardless, woke in darkness, then realised the blackout curtains were still drawn; one tiny sunbeam was escaping and wandering across the room.
Moira snored softly in the other bed. Nancy had vaguely heard her rise in the night to feed Gavin, who was now sprawled on his back, his arms and legs outflung. She smiled at his soft pale face, then tiptoed out, down to the bathroom for yet another bath, dressed in one of the garments gleaned from the house in Kuala Lumpur, this one blue polka-dotted linen, only slightly too long when she’d hauled the skirt up a little over the belt. She combed her hair, decided not to risk disturbing Moira and Gavin by going back to borrow Moira’s lipstick, then went down the stairs — forsaking the lift and its alarming creaks and groans — towards the smell of food.
‘Breakfast, madam?’
‘Please.’
The waiter surveyed the room. ‘I am sorry, madam, there is no table free. The hotel is full, you see. If madam would not mind sharing?’
‘No, of course not.’
She expected to be placed with an elderly lady, perhaps, or even a family. But the other single diners were mostly men. The few tables with families were already full. Instead the waiter led her towards an elderly man peering down at papers on his table.
‘Mr Harding, if you would be so kind, this young lady wishes breakfast and there is no table free …’
‘What? Of course, of course.’ He stood politely. ‘Cyril Harding, at your service.’
‘Nancy Clancy,’ she said, as the waiter held out her chair for her.
‘Someone either had a warped sense of humour, Miss Clancy, or you were named for a relative.’
‘My grandfather.’
He sat again and raised grey eyebrows. ‘Your grandfather was called Nancy?’
‘His surname was Clancy, and “Nancy” was as close as they could get to it.’ She risked a grin, unsure how familiar one was supposed to be with a stranger at the breakfast table. ‘Everyone just knew him as Clancy.’ She decided to omit ‘of the Overflow’.
‘I know the feeling. Prefer Harding to Cyril any day. Only the wife ever called me Cyril.’ His accent was educated Australian. In his fifties, perhaps, too old for the services unless he was in the regular army, but he wore no uniform. ‘I recommend the porridge. They know how to make it here. Some places add milk and sugar. Turns it into a sort of pudding.’
‘I eat it with milk and sugar,’ she said apologetically.
‘That’s different. Adding it after is the right thing to do. How do you feel about fish curry?’
‘Strongly against.’
‘Ah. Devilled fowl?’
She shook her head.
‘Recommend an omelette then. Not the choice there used to be.’
‘That sounds good.’
‘Excellent. The young lady will have porridge and an omelette. Fruit for both of us. Toast and my usual. Tea for you?’
‘Please. You stay here often?’ she asked, as the waiter left them, and another approached to fill their glasses with chilled water.
‘Lived here for nearly ten years now, since my wife died.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘That I am reduced to living at the Raffles? No, my dear, don’t apologise. I’m joking. Ah, porridge,’ as the waiter slipped a bowl in front of Nancy, and another in front of him. He winked at her. ‘All the waiters ran away into the jungle. Had to fend for ourselves for a night. But the next day the place was staffed again. Good management. Nothing like it. Tuck in.’
She helped herself to sugar, a pool of milk. Mr Harding, she noticed, added only salt to his, despite his words of approval earlier.
‘How are things up north?’
‘How did you know we came from there?’
‘I doubt you’ve come to Singapore for a holiday,’ he said dryly. ‘And if you had been here before now, you’d have a regular breakfast table. “We” you said. Mother, sister or sister-in-law?’
‘Sister-in-law. And nephew. You’d make a good fifth columnist.’
He choked slightly on his porridge. ‘You are a perceptive young lady. I suppose you came with the convoy last night?’
She decided not to answer that one. He smiled. ‘You’ll need to register today. All new arrivals do. And be inoculated against smallpox and typhoid. Unless your ship is leaving soon.’
Since she didn’t know when it was leaving, or even its name, she limited her reply to, ‘Thank you.’
‘Happy to be of use. Good thing you landed here. Some of the billets can be a bit rough. Bombs might fall, shells whizz across the rooftops, the Cricket Club may be rubble, but the Raffles goes on. Though they did bomb the dhobi hut last week. The washing hut,’ he added, seeing she didn’t recognise the term. ‘Lost two of my shirts. The Raffles is the only place in Singapore where you might see a maharajah dining at the next table. Doesn’t matter what colour a chap’s skin, he’s welcome at the Raffles.’
She looked up, wondering if this was a veiled reference to her skin. But he continued to spoon his porridge mildly, then sat back and let the hovering waiter take his bowl. She suspected Mr Thompson, or his agent, had been careful to book them into a hotel where there might be no question of accepting her, especially in times like these.
‘Do you know what’s been happening? I haven’t heard any news since we set out,’ she said.
‘And you’ve only been listening to the BBC World Service before that? Ah, thank you,’ as the waiter slid an omelette accompanied by baked tomatoes and a small puddle of rice in front of Nancy, and a far larger serve of rice topped with something brown and green and fragrant in front of Mr Harding. ‘Tuck in. The BBC will have us know that General Heath is holding back the Japanese at Johor Bahru. Only problem is that the Japs have already taken Johor Bahru. Which means they have also captured Singapore’s main water supply. Not to worry — it’s only been connected the last few years. The city has enough cisterns to go on with.’
If the BBC could not be trusted to tell them the truth about Malaya, considered Nancy, what might it be concealing about the rest of the world? The news they had heard back in Kuala Lumpur was desperate enough: landings on the islands of New Britain, New Ireland and in the Solomons; the surrender of the Australian forces in New Britain, the RAAF sending one last message home: We who are about to die salute you.
‘What’s really happening here?’
He studied her for a moment, then nodded, as if he had decided she was someone who preferred the truth. ‘A mess. Mess after mess. Fools of British officers who can’t accept that the Japanese aren’t marching in neat lines towards them, but creeping around behind, wading through jungle swamps, climbing palm trees, coming down by parachute, landing on the beach. Unsporting of them, but it works. Know what we should do?’
She shook her head.
‘We could wipe them out in a fortnight. Give me two thousand men and I’ll lead them behind the Jap lines. Attack them from the rear, like they are doing to us. I know the country, which is more than these damn fool Pommies can say.’
‘Are there a spare two thousand men?’
‘Plenty that aren’t being of use. But they don’t even have to be army men. Put out a call for Chinese volunteers last week. Hoped for two thousand. Got six thousand volunteers in a day. Make fine guerrilla soldiers, the Chinese. Look what they are doing back on the mainland.’
‘Gorillas?’ She had a sudden image of training large, hairy gorillas to fight Japanese soldiers.
He grinned, a surprisingly youthful grin despite his grey hair. ‘Fellas who don’t obey the rules of war. Hide out in the bush, attack when they’re not expected. Blow up supply depots. Six thousand Chinese guerrillas could keep Malaya free. Know how many of those volunteers the British Army put in uniform? None. By the time they get round to it, it will be too late.’
‘Too late’ must mean Singapore taken, she thought. For there was little else left of the peninsula. She watched Mr Harding fork up his curry. Everyone had been telling her that Singapore was impregnable, that Japan would never attack Malaya, and when it did, that Japan could never take it. This man seemed to have come to terms with the impossible.
‘Do you really think there is a chance to beat the Japanese? Even now?’ She thought of the burning rubber, the bridges exploding behind their convoy.
‘Of course. We outnumber them. Look at Malta, how it’s held out against the Germans. We could do the same here.’
‘So Singapore won’t be taken,’ she said thankfully.
‘Of course it will.’ He said it as though no one could possibly think otherwise.
‘But you said we outnumber the Japanese.’
‘Ah, but they have strategy, and we don’t. Our guns point to the sea, and not the land where the enemy is coming from. They can’t even be moved. Those in command won’t listen to army intelligence. Intelligence! Don’t know the meaning of the word.’ He peered at her over his fish curry. ‘Old Chinese chappie said it best. Clever people, the Chinese. Old Sun Tzu: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.” Eat your omelette before it gets cold,’ he added.
She attacked her omelette. It was good: filled with a slightly spicy green filling, but delicious anyway.
‘Know what the one great failure in war is? Seeing your enemy as less than you. Means you don’t truly see them at all. All the talk about Japanese on bicycles. Brilliant bit of strategy that. Of course they have vehicles too. But bicycles can move faster on crowded narrow roads. You can carry a bicycle through the jungle.’ He shook his head. ‘Most of the desk wallahs talk about Japanese “sneaking through the jungle” as if it puts them on the same level as jungle animals. Just means they are superb soldiers who were trained for just this, as our blokes weren’t. Those men are wading chest deep, covered in leeches, facing deadly snakes. Magnificent warfare. How is your omelette?’
‘Good.’
‘Excellent. And excuse an old man sounding off.’ He smiled at her over his curry. ‘You are forced to listen to me, or not get breakfast.’
‘No, really. It’s fascinating. No one else has ever talked to me seriously about the war before.’
‘I’d like to think that’s because you are a beautiful young lady and the men you meet want to talk about you, not the war. But I suspect they haven’t thought about the war themselves, just swallowed decades of clichés. Anyone with half a brain could see what was going to happen here a mile off. The Japanese foreign minister signed a treaty with the Soviets nearly a year ago so the Japanese won’t have to fight a second front in Manchuria or Korea while they’re advancing south. Japanese agents have been collecting information about Malay defences for years. No one put a stop to it — the Japanese have been allowed free movement as part of the policy of appeasement.’
He snorted. ‘You’d have thought that after Munich the British would have learnt that appeasement doesn’t work. Ah, toast,’ as the omelette and curry plates were removed and two silver toast racks were placed on either side of the table. A silver dish of marmalade and another of strawberry jam appeared, and two of butter, neatly curled.
‘You don’t seem angry,’ she said tentatively.
He snorted. ‘Used up my anger in the last war. Two armies of equal stupidity butting their heads together in the mud for four years, till the Americans arrived just as our side was finally discovering what the word “tactics” meant.’ He gave her a sardonic glance as he offered her the toast. ‘Look up the dictionary sometime. You’ll see “intelligence” then underneath it “military intelligence”. Dictionary is right. Two separate animals.’
He helped himself to butter, spreading the marmalade thickly. ‘Can’t beat grapefruit marmalade. Though it’s not proper grapefuit here. This will be pomelo. What was I saying? Could have stopped the whole invasion in its tracks if it hadn’t been for command back in England. American intelligence, and British too for that matter, knew about the Japanese convoys days before the attack. Local commanders asked permission to take them out. Half an hour and the whole invasion would have been stopped in its tracks if the Japanese had lost those two transports. Bally desk wallahs refused. All this,’ he waved his hand, taking in the waiters in their uniforms, the trays piled high with fish, strange messes on heaps of bright white rice, the silver porringers but also, presumably, the smoke and rubble of Singapore outside, the burning spires of rubber dotted through the jungle, ‘one decisive action could have stopped it all. Now we are on a two-hundred-square-mile island, penned up like a mob of sheep while the Japanese guns bark at us from the mainland.’
‘What do you think will happen?’
He swallowed a mouthful of his toast, signalled to the waiter. ‘Coffee, if you please. Ah, yes, that’s the ticket,’ as something more resembling thick black tar than coffee was poured into his cup. ‘Hot and black, that’s the way to drink it. I imagine old Percival is going to surrender, that’s what’s going to happen. Surrender to a force less than half the size of the Allies. The Japanese adapt to the terrain. The British haven’t learnt how to.’
She put her toast down on her plate. ‘So Japan will win the war?’ Japanese masters of Australia, of Overflow, of Drinkwater. I’d die before I let that happen, she thought, and so would Michael. And Dad and Mum and the Thompsons. We wouldn’t run, as we’ve done here. We’d stand and fight.
Somehow she must get back —
‘Oh, no.’ Mr Harding took another bite of toast, swallowed. ‘Japan will lose.’
‘But you said —’
‘Said the British haven’t learnt how to adapt … yet. But they will. Look at the Great War. No real tactics till the last two years, and then we whipped them. But it’s not going to be Britain who saves Australia this time. We’ll need to do it ourselves, with Yankee help.’
‘But the American fleet, their planes have been destroyed …’
‘As most of ours have been lost in the Middle East too. Don’t underestimate the Yanks. They have what Japan doesn’t.’
She thought he meant courage. But he continued, ‘Natural resources. Oil. Iron. Factories. They’ll be making new planes and ships already, while every ship, every plane that Japan loses means one more lost to them for good. And we,’ he meant Australia now, ‘have food.’
‘How does that help?’
‘Takes food to fuel an army. Japan doesn’t even send rations with its troops. They can hardly grow enough for themselves on those small islands — they’re mostly mountains. The Japanese armies have to live off the land wherever they are, a land disrupted by war. They can manage that in China, in Thailand, even here. But they won’t find it so easy in Papua or the islands, or north Australia for that matter. America has its cornfields, we have our wheat and meat. We’ll win. But it won’t be soon.’
She thought of the sheep at home, the eggs from the chooks, the paddock of pumpkins Dad put in each spring, the Lees’ market garden. Could those really make a difference and win a war? Did this old man know what he was talking about, more than the generals in command?
Yes, she thought. Like Gentleman Once, who’d predicted all this.
‘What are you going to do now?’
She meant, was he too waiting for a ship to take him back to Australia. But the grey eyes twinkled at her. ‘Put on my uniform and go to work. Not supposed to be in civilian dress, but I always spill marmalade at breakfast. Can’t do a good day’s work without a decent breakfast.’
She looked. Yes, there was a spot of yellow marmalade on his tie. He wiped it off with a finger, licked it, grinned again at his own bad manners, then stood up.
He must be one of the very intelligence officers he had talked about, she realised. She wondered why he had told her so much. She met his eyes, and saw the steel. Not a kind old gentleman. Well, yes, he was, but not just that. Anger simmered deep inside him, despite his words, seeing a battle being lost that might have been won.
‘You eat up, my girl. You’re going to need it. And get yourself on a ship out of here.’
‘We have passages booked for us. I don’t know when we sail though, or even the name of the ship.’
‘Captains keep information like that close to their chests. You just get yourself down to the Shipping Office every day and see what’s happening. Make sure your name is on the list and make sure it stays on the list.’
‘Please …’ He was about to go. ‘If … if the Japanese take Singapore before we can get out, what will happen to us?’
‘You’ll be interned as enemy aliens. Anyone in the military becomes a prisoner of war — unless they know the islands well enough to get to Batavia from here.’ There was something in his face that said he knew those islands very well indeed. ‘If you have the bad luck to be taken prisoner, you might be exchanged for Japanese prisoners after a while, but I doubt it — Japan hasn’t signed the Geneva Convention.’
She hadn’t heard of that; didn’t want to waste his time asking what it was. His face was sombre now.
‘I wish you had left here months ago. I spent a year of the last war as a prisoner of war in Germany. If worst comes to the worst, Miss Clancy, remember this. We’ll win. Not by next Christmas: not for years. But we have the resources, and they don’t. We’ll win in the end. All you need to do is survive, and you’ll get home again. Can you remember that?’
‘Yes.’
‘I think you will.’ He looked across the dining room. ‘And now, if I’m not mistaken, that is your sister-in-law, who is going to give you a stern telling-off for talking to strange men. Good morning, Miss Clancy. And good luck.’
‘Good luck to you too.’
She stood as Moira approached, Gavin in her arms. Moira accepted Mr Harding’s polite nod with a slight inclination of her own, then waited till he was out of earshot. ‘Nancy! What on earth were you doing talking to a strange man?’
Just what Mr Harding said she’d say, thought Nancy. Was he correct about everything else too?
‘The hotel is crowded. I couldn’t have a table to myself. And it would have been extremely rude not to make conversation with the person who allowed me to share his.’
‘Then you should have waited till I came down.’
There was no point arguing. Nancy reached over and lifted Gavin from Moira’s arms. ‘They have porridge! I’ll give Gavin some while you have breakfast. You’ll feel better when you’ve eaten.’
The waiter appeared at the table, proffered a menu. Moira took it. Her face brightened. ‘Porridge — two servings, please, one for the baby. Oh, devilled kidneys.’
‘I am afraid, madam, that we have no kidneys today.’
Nancy suppressed a smile at the thought of all of the Raffles’s guests and staff suddenly minus their kidneys.
‘The devilled fowl is particularly good this morning.’
‘I will have that then. And a pot of tea now, if you please.’ Her eyes raked Nancy, gave grudging approval to dress, stockings, shoes and hair, lingered on the lack of lipstick.
‘I’ll go down to the P&O Office straight after breakfast.’ Nancy took a breath. ‘You need to have the bags packed in case we have to sail straight away.’
She waited for argument. It didn’t come. Moira nodded. ‘I’ll be ready. Ah, thank you,’ to the waiter bringing their porridge; she bestowed a smile on another who brought fresh tea and handed Nancy a teaspoon to feed Gavin. ‘I’m not stupid, my dear. If … when … Ben manages to get to Singapore, he’ll be evacuated with the army, just like at Dunkirk. Civilians like us would just get in the way. Oh, you’ve got porridge on your dress already!’ She reached over and wiped off the spot, then tied a damask napkin around Gavin as a bib.
Nancy fed Gavin another spoonful, smiled as he gulped it down. Despite their flight the day before, despite Mr Harding’s words, a strange sense of peace enveloped her. In a few weeks’ time she’d be at Overflow, maybe even before Michael had to go back to school. Mum and Dad and Gran. The river and the hills. And paddocks that stretched across the plain — wonderful wide paddocks where she’d be moving sheep, dagging them, carting hay, back in her working clothes.
And if Moira tried any nonsense, Mum and Gran would deal with her.