Rain

“Do you think the weather will clear?” someone asked of no one in particular, a tinge of nervousness in their voice. I ignored her and continued to read my newspaper. We were fighting the Italians and Germans near someplace called Tobruk and there was still speculation on whether the Americans would enter the war. All of which meant nothing to me. Meanwhile, sheets of rain continued to fall outside. I glanced at my watch. Four hours since I arrived at the airport. Three hours after the scheduled departure. I had been in Malaya long enough to know that schedules were merely advisory, benchmarks to measure your frustration and aggravation against.

When I had booked my plane ticket to Singapore, two days prior, the agent had warned me about the weather and asked if I wouldn’t rather travel by train. The trains, however, were even more unreliable than planes and the last thing I wanted right now was to be stuck in some backwater village with no way to continue my journey other than to wait for whatever malfunction caused the delay to be repaired. With any luck, I would get to Singapore by the morning of the 10^th. Plenty of time to catch the evening departure of the Star Line. I would be back in England in time for Christmas.

I shifted in my seat, trying to ignore the fact that my once starched shirt was plastered to my back.  Although mild by Malya standards, the heat and humidity in the lounge were oppressive. I had worn my one good suit for the flight. I had discarded my suit jacket as soon as I entered the lounge, but I was still longingly thinking about a long soak in a cool tub. Maybe I would be able to get the last of the dirt out from under my nails. “Visit Malaya,” my associates in England had suggested, “make some money, have an adventure.” Maybe the adventure was surviving the weather. I couldn’t complain about the money-making opportunities. I had scored far bigger than I expected, enough to set me up for years when I got back to England. The past eleven months had been hard, the heat and the insects nearly driving me crazy, but the planning and work had paid off and now it was time to leave, if only the rain would stop.

Holding my paper as a screen, I scanned my fellow would be travelers. Six other passengers occupied the room. Next to the window was the only woman in the room, a whisp of a girl in a big hat and a wrinkled silk dress. Her youthful face, mostly hidden by the hat was marked with swelling under one of her eyes that her makeup couldn’t quite disguise In addition to the lady staring out the window, a man who had to be her husband was hovering on the edge of the room, pacing with uncontrolled energy. He was a thin man in a well-tailored linin suit who appeared to be considerably older than his bride. His face was fixed in a grimace, the sort I had seen people with a perpetually dyspeptic stomach wear. More interesting was the fact that he was the only one in the room that didn’t seem to be suffering from the heat. Sprawled on one of the lounge chairs, hat over his eyes, quiet snores raising up occasionally was a local, probably a second-generation plantation owner, used to the vagaries of travel. His dirty clothes and worn shoes indicated that his plantation wasn’t thriving. The sleeper and the married couple had already been in the lounge when I arrived. The final two travelers arrived about two hours after me. While the couple were almost definitely tourists, these gentlemen were harder to classify, a pair of non-descript men, in similar but not matching suits, who had not spoken to anyone since they arrived. I decided after considering them for close to thirty minutes that they had to be working for a government agency, but which one and for which country it was impossible to guess.

As small as our lounge was, it comprised almost half of the little airport. Outside the lounge doors was an even smaller entrance hall. Two airport employees, locals in traditional dress, had taken my bags and checked my ticket after my taxi had delivered me, the five-mile drive taking forty minutes through the crowded, flooded streets. I hadn’t been able to get a straight answer on the chances of departing today.  The inability to get a straight answer something to a simple question was a frequent experience in Malaya, but today was not the day for double talk.

At the opposite end of the lounge, a door led to the small patch of tarmac where our plane was parked. The runway itself was just a strip of red mud. The waiting plane taunted me, poised for takeoff but going nowhere. Needing to move, I stood up to walk over to the window, pushing my case just a little further under my seat as I stood.

 The lady in the silk dress took my approach as an invitation to ask more questions. “Does it always rain like this?”

“Not always. Sometimes it rains harder.” I was studying the large puddles covering the sodden runway. It certainly never rained like this back in England, an incessant deluge that felt like it would never end. The type of rain that turned a small stream into a raging torrent, turned hard packed roads into quagmires. A ceaseless pounding on tin roofs that eventually drove nails into your brain. English rain was taciturn in comparison, coming and going, as if it couldn’t decide whether to stay. This rain gave no impression of ever going away.

Pulling a pack of Camels from my shirt pocket, I offered the lady one out of habit more than politeness. She smiled and took one of the three remaining.

“Thank you, Mr.?” she asked politely.

“Smith.” I lit our smokes. My open expression must have indicated that I cared about her name.

“Nancy. Nancy Andrews,” she said, introducing herself. “What brings you to Malaya, Mr. Smith?”

“Delusions of grandeur.”

“Young man, out to make his fortune, I take it?” I grunted something that she construed to be a yes. “Reg and I are on our honeymoon. He planned it all himself, thinking it would be great fun. But it hasn’t been fun, has it, Reg? Nothing but rain and mud everywhere we’ve gone. I’m ready to get home.” There was no anger in her words, but the reproach and bitterness were palpable.

I glanced over at Reg to see if he had taken offence at his wife’s comments. His expression hadn’t changed but his eyes had gone dark as he stared at everything but his wife. Not wanting to risk getting involved in a domestic spat, I changed the subject. “You see anyone moving out there?”

“I can barely see anything,” she said, distractedly, “but I haven’t seen anything move other than leaves blowing in the wind.”

I nodded and returned to my seat, not interested in more conversation. I watched Reg walk over to his wife and put a hand on her back that she shook off with a slight twitch. He didn’t say anything, but I got the message. He was marking his territory, master of the pride.  As I sat, wondering if I should go talk to Nancy again just to mess with Reg some more, one of the government types asked, “You done with that paper?”

“It’s almost a week old, but you’re welcome to it.”  I handed him the paper when he leaned close. My cigarette had done nothing but make my throat raw. The little lounge had a small, unstaffed bar at one end. I walked over and looked at the drink options. I was surprised to see several bottles of beer sitting in a tub of melting ice. I hadn’t seen an ice cube in almost a year.

“Hello,” I shouted toward the front room. “Can I get some service here?” Almost instantly, one of the natives appeared through the door. The bar man was able to understand my beer order plain enough, but my questions about the plane received a glassy eyed stare. While I sipped my pleasantly cold beer, I heard a car driving up to the airport.

I’m pretty sure no one saw me tense up as I listened to the sound of the new arrivals and the extra beads of sweat dripping down my back certainly went unnoticed. It wasn’t until the door to the lounge opened and two additional passengers entered that I could begin to relax.

As opposed to the other travelers, the new arrivals were gregarious and talkative. “That looks grand,” one of them said to me in a broad, northern English accent, eyeing my beer.

“Plenty more cold ones at the bar.” I drained the last of my bottle. “My treat. Would your friend like one as well?”

“Never known Nev to turn down a drink, have you, Nev?

“Ta, very much,” Nev replied, his accent much closer to my London roots, although probably not as working class as the accent I had tried hard to lose.

As the three of us stood at the bar, the first man, who informed the room that his name was Stanley, kept up a running monologue, occasionally interrupted by an aside or laugh from Nev.

Despite trying to convey a complete lack of interest, I soon knew that Stanley and Nev were salesmen for the world’s largest provider of gutta percha processing equipment. The mention of gutta percha grabbed the attention of the government men. They introduced themselves as employees of the War department who had been in Malaya to produce an estimate for the size of the gutta percha crop because, as one of them put it, “it’s going to take a lot of tanks and planes to beat Hitler, and we need rubber to make them.” The four were soon involved in an extended conversation about the market for gutta percha versus synthetic rubber, the number of new plantations that were being cultivated.

I quickly tuned out the conversation, sipping my beer and daydreaming about a pint of good bitter at my local. It took me a minute to register the new voice entering the conversation.

“I said, I think the rain is stopping,” Reg repeated, speaking for the first time. Sure enough, the first rays of sunshine came poking through the clouds and the downpour had subsided to a light drizzle. All my fellow travelers migrated to the window, as if their gaze would dry the runway faster.

I was much more interested in how long the sun would stay. I had seen enough of Malaya to know that the blazing sun could bake mud into brick-like solidity in just a few hours. I was trying to do the math in my head to calculate when I might reach Singapore when a commotion from the street interrupted my thoughts.

Within moments of the sound, three military officers entered the lounge. I slumped in my seat, trying to make myself small. My pulse raced at the sight of the trio surveying the room.  Fortunately, they weren’t looking for me.

“Where’s Captain Wilcox?” a grey-haired officer with a bristle mustache and close-cropped hair asked. “I was told he was here.”

“Here he is, Major,” one of the junior officers pronounced, roughly shaking the sleeping passenger.

Wilcox woke angrily. “What is it? Is it time to depart?”

The Major looked at Wilcox with contempt. It was easy to understand his distaste. Now that he was standing, I could tell that the man was apparently our pilot, but his unshaved face and wrinkled and stained uniform didn’t inspire confidence. “How quickly can you get your plane ready to depart?”

“The plane is ready. It’s the runway that’s the concern.” Wilcox walked to the window and evaluated the scene. “At least six hours, probably closer to twelve before I can even think about attempting to fly. Any sooner and we’ll slide into the jungle, or worse. What’s the rush anyway? You chaps know that the flight schedule always is driven by the weather.”

“Didn’t you hear? The Japanese landed at Kota Bharu this morning. Best guess is that we have a day, two at most, before 20,000 Jap soldiers are knocking on our doors. We are hoping that you can evacuate all the women and children from the Embassy before they get here. How many passengers can you take?”

“The Douglass has seats for 21,” Wilcox replied, his attitude transformed, but if people are willing to travel without luggage and sit in the aisles, I can probably squeeze in 30.”

“Excellent,” the Major replied. “Hasting, return to the Embassy and identify 29 passengers. Children first. Elderly women second.”

“Why 29?” Wilcox asked.

“I think the lady deserves to keep her seat,” the Major replied.

“Hey, what about us? I have a ticket for this tub that I intend to use!” I was royally pissed. If I didn’t get on the plane, all my planning would be wasted.

“I have just voided your ticket, Smith. You are not a priority,” the Major barked. “A fit lad like you should already be in uniform. I know your type. When your friends joined up in ’39, you said they were fools. When you thought you might get drafted, you hopped a ship to the farthest reaches of the Empire thinking you’d be safe. Well, sir, the war has found you.”

“War is for fools. My Pa signed up in 1914, came home on leave long enough to sire me and then got blown up at the Somme. They couldn’t find enough of him to put in a coffin. All those dead didn’t accomplish a thing.”

The Major started to speak but Stanley interrupted him. “I served on the Somme as well. And I agree that the entire war was a waste. The idiots in charge blindly throwing men against machine guns and barbed wire, exhorting us for just one more push.” I eyed the Major, who was none too happy with Stanley’s comments. “But this war is different. The Nazi’s are bad enough, but the Japs are something else. You must have read about Nanking or seen the newsreels. You think they’ll be any different here?” He gave me a look that I couldn’t quite interpret. “Major, Nev and I might be a bit long in the tooth, but we both know the shooting end of a gun. Let us know how we can help.”

The two war department men immediately added their willingness to join the fight, but I wasn’t swayed. “No one is paying me to care about the over-pampered children of Embassy employees or their wives or anyone else for that matter.”

“Why Mr. Smith, I would have taken you for more of a patriot. I’m sure Reg is happy to do his bit, aren’t you Reg?” Nancy said, almost daring Reg to say no.

I could see that Reg wanted to fire back a retort, but he chose to save face. “Wouldn’t dream of anything else.”

The Major overruled the possibility of me continuing to object. “Excellent, we are all agreed. Weatherby, take these men to the rally point and have them issued weapons.”

Weatherby, a lieutenant who looked too young to have started shaving, motioned for us to follow him to the truck waiting outside. “Just a minute, lieutenant.” I grabbed my hold all from under my seat and handed it to Nancy. “Could you see that my mum gets this? Address in on the tag,” I shoved the bag in her hands and trotted to the truck.

The six of us entered the back of a canvas topped Army truck. The sides and back of the canvas were rolled up, so we had a good view of the streets and buildings as we drove. We did not stop in central Kuala Lumpur like I expected but joined a long line of trucks and other vehicles heading out of the city. The rain appeared to have stopped for good and the sun was quickly drying the puddles on the side of the road.

The convoy came to a halt about twenty miles outside the city at a spot that had a view of the broad expanse of road leading to the east. Instead of being given a rifle, a shovel was thrust in my hands and we were told to dig as deep a trench as we could. My fellow would be travelers with split up among different squads and I lost sight of them. Surrounded by a group of affable Australians, we dug until the trenches and mounts of dirt in front were shoulder height. It was well past dark at that point and my good suit and shoes were ruined beyond repair.

As NCO came by and passed out cans of bully beef which we all ate straight out of the can. Nervous laughter and bad jokes accompanied our dinner, the typical humor of soldiers who might be facing death. From somewhere off to my right, I heard someone say, “Hey Tom, did you hear that someone robbed the Coutts Bank last night? Lucky bastard picked the perfect night to rob a bank.”