Large rats were scurrying on endless journeys up and down the hut, having a pow-wow on the roof about the rotten weather, and how it had flooded them out of their nests. He couldn’t relish such company, spun the telephone handle in the hope that somehow the cable had miraculously mended itself out in the swamps. But it was dead, useless as a picked lock, and after another drink of water he lay down in a cold sweat of sleep.
Livid wounds lit up the hut and penetrated his eyelids, forcing them wide open, so that, staring at wind and thunder that sounded as if some lunatic had been set loose with matches among touch paper, the noise seemed louder than when his head was down. The sheets were quickly wet, and he wondered if water had been dropping down without his knowing it, was comforted to realize it was only his sweat. The thought of moving the bed out of rain-drips seemed to demand a too impossible effort through his fatigue.
Lightning flashed continually, as if the sky had turned itself into an enormous signalling lamp and he was lying right by it: at one time he woke and tried to read its signals but they didn’t make sense, unintelligible morse quickly erased by a follow-up of thunder.
He noticed a dull grey light in the hut, felt it before opening his eyes, as if it were a tangible thing, a ghost that rain had pushed like a letter under the door while his face was turned. He had mixed feelings about waking up, and such noise greeted him this morning that he would rather have stayed asleep. The storm had rampaged all night, still went like a full-grown battle that, though covering the whole country, seemed to centre on the paddy field and the DF hut in particular. Something else infected him with worry as he lay on his back. He shivered from the clinging touch of the cold sheet and the intense smell of mould, grew colder from a fit of coughing, so pulled his shirt on and sat up. A foot of water came nearly to bed level, covering his wellington boots and a tattered Penguin book. The flood: I’ll thumb a lift from Noah as he goes by. Roll on the boat. What can you do, O what can you do? Can it, and belt up. What a bastard, though. I’d better move. I can’t hear myself think with this thunder: I want earplugs — and an eyeshade for the lightning. Water curved from his wellingtons, which he emptied and put on. Then he paddled to the receiver and pulled down switches. He pressed the key to bring himself on frequency, which elicited a good morning from Mingaladon in Burma. “What’s good about it?” he tapped back. That stopped his gallop. It was seven o’clock.
He looked out from the leeward door of the hut. All but the far-off trees were covered, and the path across the paddy field — now a lake — leading to the higher ground of the runway was nowhere to be seen. Rain still pitched itself into agitated water, as if it would go on falling until the hut collapsed and floated away. He saw it clearly, and his first thought was to desert the hut, to wade through the paddy field and reach the runway, for in this mess the aerials were useless for bearings.
He paddled to the desk, and by some miracle got through to the control tower by field telephone, began spinning a sorry though vivid tale to the officer on duty. His description was cut short: “Close the hut then, and get back here. A lorry’ll take you to camp.” But what about a boat to get me to the runway? he thought as he slammed the receiver down so hard it almost cracked. The loony bastard.
Whistling a tune, he stuffed logbooks and ammunition into his pack, disconnected the accumulators, and lifted them to the highest point. A bloated leech, as big as a small snake, wriggled between his boots and made its way into the hut through a gap. “You wain’t find owt in there: I just got out in time,” he called after it. The hut sides were a crawling mass of spiders and other insects that had taken refuge from the rising flood, and rats squeaked in fear from the roof, running down to look at the water now and again, then hurrying back to tell the others it hadn’t gone down, might in fact come up to get them yet.
His boots found the path, two feet under the surface. A lit cigarette was soaked and blown across his face, and he spent most of the journey spitting tobacco-bits back at the wind. With the Sten gun looped over his shoulder, he waded slowly, for in some places the path had been washed away, and he floundered almost up to his armpits trying to find it again. He was sweating under the rain, afraid of meeting snakes, remembering the many he had seen and particularly the python splashing not long ago near the hut. Maybe they all swam off to the trees, was a happy though not convincing thought. He swore aloud and talked to himself. It’s an adventure right enough, and I’m as far away as I ever wanted to be, about three times farther than Abyssinia, which is sayin’ summat, but Christ, I’ll be glad to reach that runway where I can’t get bitten, and get back to camp where I can swill some tea. He pulled the cape around him to keep out the driving rain. If only the old man could see me now: “What did I tell you?” he’d say. “You daft sod, up to your neck in that rheumatic water. If you like water that much you’d a done better going for a swim in the Trent. I towd yer not to join up. They never did owt for us, so why should yo’ do owt for them? Eh?”
A mile trek along the runway was made against a spearhead of wind, and he felt his face being blown out of shape, cape flying back like Bela Lugosi, the vampire-bat man’s, hat twisted like an old gold-digger’s. Soap bubbles came from the toes of his wellingtons. He was even too fed up to worry about a plane pouring down the runway behind and flattening him. All I want now is a warm billet and a long novel, and a shovelful of grub every four hours to keep me fed. It’s an easy life, though, except when a wet sky falls on top of you.
The control tower wasn’t much better off than the DF hut. Water poured through the roof, and maps covering the walls were discoloured beyond recognition: Burma was running hell for leather into the Bay of Bengal, and French Indo-China was making a sly move against Singapore. Sumatra was going red, which gave him a laugh, though he thought it was a shame and a waste about the good maps. A large shed opposite the tower, which catapulted a firetender whenever a plane was expected to land, had been blown flat to the ground. That’ll cost ’em a bob or two to put right, he smiled. The flying-control officer gave him a few dirty looks because he was dressed in a civvy shirt instead of a uniform, but Brian smoked obliviously in the doorway, feeling the dampness getting into his marrow.
The relief lorry arrived through the mud, Baker landing in a pool of water he couldn’t have seen as it pulled up. “Is the camp still there?” Brian asked when he’d finished cursing. “Or has it bin swept away?”
Baker refused a cigarette: “We’ve got to go back to the hut and bring the accumulators out.”
“You can’t get back yet. The paddy field’s flooded.”
“The signals officer says we must.”
Brian felt as though he’d been thumped at the back of the head, red stars winking in front of his eyes. “The jumped-up bastard, what does he know about it? He wants to come out and get ’em himself instead of knocking back whisky and cornflakes in his jumped-up mess.”
Baker had been to a public school, was hidebound and full of games, mutinous only within the limits of King’s Regulations. “We have to do it anyway.”
Brian came down the steps. “Back through the slosh for a couple of mouldy accumulators.” The lorry took little over a minute to do the runway mile, and Baker was daunted to see the water so high. “Come on then,” Brian called out, already waist into it, “frightened o’ getting wet? Don’t mind the odd snake: they run away from yo’ first.”