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Authors: Kate Furnivall
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hatch!’ he said, though he didn’t drink himself.
They knocked back the rice wine, replaced the glasses on the table and regarded him with the faintest shadow of impatience.
He leaned forward, elbows on the table, and the young one did the same.
‘So,’ Madoc began, ‘you’ve heard that our boys in the north are on the move.’
‘It has come to our notice,
hai
, yes. What would be advantageous to our Command Planning is to know how many battalions and …’
At that point, two sailors pushed open the door to the bar. As Madoc gave them a quick appraisal, he felt his table companions
grow tense.
‘Junior ratings,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Relax.’
The pair had probably come upriver by sampan to taste what the jungle had to offer, in search of wilder women and rougher
whisky. Word of Morgan’s Bar was whispered in the towns on the coast.
You want good girls? Good ganja? Good gambling? I take you.
These sailors were big andmuscular, but next to the Malays and Chinese, anyone looked big. He was tempted to go over and steer them into the back room
with a cold beer in their fists. That was where he made his real money, in the cramped and stuffy back room. On the spin of
the roulette wheel or the turn of a card. Men lost everything in the grim little sweatbox where dreams were crushed time and
again, yet still they came back for more.
These sailors were still wet behind the ears. He could tell that they were new to Malaya by their pink English skins, fresh
reinforcements shipped in as nerves curled tighter in this part of the world. He knew the battlecruiser
Repulse
and the battleship
Prince of Wales
were patrolling the seas. The sailors inspected the bar with interest, but stopped in their tracks when they caught sight
of the Japs. Most Japanese had the sense to withdraw from Malaya because of the worsening situation, the Europeans uncertain
as to whether the Japs would dare risk an attack, and Madoc saw no reason why his saké friends insisted on coming as a trio
instead of just one of them alone. One might pass unnoticed. Three jumped down your bloody throat. But there was safety in
numbers.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said softly, ‘shall we step outside for some air?’
He walked over to the sailors and pointed them in Kitty’s direction. They went like lambs. He opened the door, took a deep
breath of the night air, as moist and heavy as the saké, and walked out into the darkness. The jungle and the
Sungai Lereh
river muttered to him like old friends but he barely noticed the noises, except for the booming call of the frogs, as insistent
as toothache.
Morgan’s Bar sat in a muddy patch at the end of a jetty that led passengers straight into the clearing that Madoc had created
out of densely packed jungle, with no reference to anyone else. He’d chugged up by boat one humid afternoon, avoiding the
mangrove swamps that stretched their grey roots like dead arms reaching out of the jungle, and dynamited himself a space about
fifty yards square. He’d slept that night in a stifling tent in the middle of his crater, and next morning set about taming
it. That was twelve years ago. Too long, far too long.
As he lit himself another cigarette from the old butt and watched one draw life from the other, the three Japanese joined
him. They moved as soundlessly as snakes.
‘Madoc-san,’ the polite spokesman said in low tones. ‘We are waiting.’
Madoc drew them out of the splash of yellow light thrown from the bar’s windows and into the deep shadow of the building on
his right. It loomed up with a jagged profile against the starless night sky, only half constructed, a black shapeless shell.
But at the sight of its unfinished walls, Madoc’s blood kicked hard in a vein at his temple, almost as sharp as a mosquito
bite. Month by month the walls were clawing their way up, but he needed more bricks, more sand, more cement, more lead piping,
more wiring, more …
They knocked back the rice wine, replaced the glasses on the table and regarded him with the faintest shadow of impatience.
He leaned forward, elbows on the table, and the young one did the same.
‘So,’ Madoc began, ‘you’ve heard that our boys in the north are on the move.’
‘It has come to our notice,
hai
, yes. What would be advantageous to our Command Planning is to know how many battalions and …’
At that point, two sailors pushed open the door to the bar. As Madoc gave them a quick appraisal, he felt his table companions
grow tense.
‘Junior ratings,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Relax.’
The pair had probably come upriver by sampan to taste what the jungle had to offer, in search of wilder women and rougher
whisky. Word of Morgan’s Bar was whispered in the towns on the coast.
You want good girls? Good ganja? Good gambling? I take you.
These sailors were big andmuscular, but next to the Malays and Chinese, anyone looked big. He was tempted to go over and steer them into the back room
with a cold beer in their fists. That was where he made his real money, in the cramped and stuffy back room. On the spin of
the roulette wheel or the turn of a card. Men lost everything in the grim little sweatbox where dreams were crushed time and
again, yet still they came back for more.
These sailors were still wet behind the ears. He could tell that they were new to Malaya by their pink English skins, fresh
reinforcements shipped in as nerves curled tighter in this part of the world. He knew the battlecruiser
Repulse
and the battleship
Prince of Wales
were patrolling the seas. The sailors inspected the bar with interest, but stopped in their tracks when they caught sight
of the Japs. Most Japanese had the sense to withdraw from Malaya because of the worsening situation, the Europeans uncertain
as to whether the Japs would dare risk an attack, and Madoc saw no reason why his saké friends insisted on coming as a trio
instead of just one of them alone. One might pass unnoticed. Three jumped down your bloody throat. But there was safety in
numbers.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said softly, ‘shall we step outside for some air?’
He walked over to the sailors and pointed them in Kitty’s direction. They went like lambs. He opened the door, took a deep
breath of the night air, as moist and heavy as the saké, and walked out into the darkness. The jungle and the
Sungai Lereh
river muttered to him like old friends but he barely noticed the noises, except for the booming call of the frogs, as insistent
as toothache.
Morgan’s Bar sat in a muddy patch at the end of a jetty that led passengers straight into the clearing that Madoc had created
out of densely packed jungle, with no reference to anyone else. He’d chugged up by boat one humid afternoon, avoiding the
mangrove swamps that stretched their grey roots like dead arms reaching out of the jungle, and dynamited himself a space about
fifty yards square. He’d slept that night in a stifling tent in the middle of his crater, and next morning set about taming
it. That was twelve years ago. Too long, far too long.
As he lit himself another cigarette from the old butt and watched one draw life from the other, the three Japanese joined
him. They moved as soundlessly as snakes.
‘Madoc-san,’ the polite spokesman said in low tones. ‘We are waiting.’
Madoc drew them out of the splash of yellow light thrown from the bar’s windows and into the deep shadow of the building on
his right. It loomed up with a jagged profile against the starless night sky, only half constructed, a black shapeless shell.
But at the sight of its unfinished walls, Madoc’s blood kicked hard in a vein at his temple, almost as sharp as a mosquito
bite. Month by month the walls were clawing their way up, but he needed more bricks, more sand, more cement, more lead piping,
more wiring, more …
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