Part Two
13
On account of the hazards of war-time, the convoys that were diverted without explanation, the passenger vessels that were commandeered for the movement of troops, the seats on aeroplanes usurped at the last moment by august officials, not to mention the spies that lurked everywhere and studied every mortal thing that moved on the face of the earth through field-glasses or kept their treacherous ears open while quaffing pints in dockside pubs, Matthew Webb had been frustrated again and again in his efforts to reach Singapore. The result was that the month of November was already well advanced before he found himself on the last stages of his journey. By that time, though his impending arrival had not been forgotten by the Blacketts (Walter brooded on it constantly and so, presumably, did Joan), it had assumed less momentous proportions than in the first days after Mr Webb’s death. Walter could see the matter now more in perspective, for the old man had been buried for almost a month, sad news which had been conveyed to Matthew in Colombo where he had been stranded interminably until Walter could pull a string or two with the RAF. Moreover, in the frenzied commercial atmosphere of Singapore at the time, exacerbated by the bewildering arrival of more and yet more troops from Australia and India, who could manage to spare time for such domestic, or dynastic, matters, or even, if it comes to that, think of the same thing for two moments running? But at last Matthew was about to arrive.
The Avro Anson which for an hour or more had been following the wandering dark-green edge of the coast now swung out to sea before turning north-west in a wide curve that would bring it back over Singapore. For a few moments nothing could be seen but an expanse of water so dazzling that it hurt Matthew’s eyes as he looked down on it from the cabin window. Then, as the Anson floated in over the harbour in which lay three grey warships and a multitude of other vessels, over the railway station with its track curving away across the island to the Causeway, and over a number of miniature buildings scarcely big enough to house a colony of fleas, it began to wobble in a dreadful, sickening fashion, and to lose height. Presently, the Singapore River (which was really nothing but a tidal creek) crept from under the wing, ominously bulging near its mouth like a snake which had just swallowed a rabbit and then trailing back inland to the thinnest of tails on the far side of the city.
Next there came an open green space on which a fleas’ cricket match was taking place and then the toy spire of a cathedral, aptly set at the intersection of diagonal paths forming the cross of St Andrew, with one or two flea-worshippers scurrying over its green sward to offer up their evening prayers, for the sun, though still brightly fingering the cabin of the aircraft, was already casting deep shadows over the cathedral lawns … But again the plane dropped sickeningly and the wing on one side tilted up in the most alarming way, so that even though Matthew continued to look down he could still see nothing but sky. This dismaying sensation continued until the plane had completed a full circle and was coming in from the sea again with level wings. But even so, every few moments the floor would seem to drop away and when Matthew tried to interest himself, as a diversion, in MacFadyean’s History of the Rubber Industry which lay open on his lap, he was promptly obliged to jettison even this light work from his thoughts, simply to keep the plane airborne.
By now they were distressingly near the surface. He saw waves, then a junk floating past the cabin window with a thick-veined sail, then a flotsam of human heads and waving hands. Somehow or other the wheels cleared the roof of the swimming club at Tanjong Rhu (Matthew would have thought they were too low to have cleared anything at all). A few more perilous wobbles and the wheels consented to touch down with a bump and a brief howl, followed by another bump as the tail touched. The journey had been a strain: he had never been up in an aeroplane before. But now he felt relieved and pleased with himself; soon he would be describing the experience to his earthbound friends.
‘Don’t forget to watch out for the Singapore Grip!’ shouted one of the crew after him in a clamour of cheerful goodbyes and laughter as he jumped stiffly to the ground.
Now he found himself standing on the tarmac, a little unsteadily on account of the equatorial gale from the still turning propellors. Uncertain which way to walk he peered around in the haze of evening sunlight. The heat was suddenly stifling: he was clad in it from head to toe, as if wrapped in steaming towels.
A figure in a white flannel suit was hurrying towards him into the slip-stream, trouser legs flapping, jacket ballooning and one large hand clapped on to a khaki sun-helmet to keep it on his head. The other hand was held out even from some yards’ distance towards Matthew who, a moment later, found himself shaking it.
‘You’re Matthew Webb, aren’t you? I’m Monty Blackett. I expect you’ve heard of me … Hm, now let me see, I don’t think we have met before, have we? Never mind, anyway. It doesn’t make any difference. We’ll get to know each other in a jiffy, I expect. Can’t very well help it in a hole like this.’ Monty was a burly young man about the same age as Matthew but his face had a heavy-set appearance which made him look older: an impression reinforced when he removed his sunhelmet for a moment to scratch his head by the fact that his hair was receding. Matthew wondered whether the black tie he was wearing, which had been blown back over his shoulder, was a mark of respect for his father or merely conventional Singapore attire.
After the two young men had exchanged greetings, which they had to shout because of the noise from the engines, there was an awkward pause between them.
‘Look, it’s been raining,’ Matthew shouted, nodding at the shivering pools of rainwater that lay here and there on the tarmac; at the same time he smiled at himself, thinking that that was not what he had meant to say at all.
‘What?’ bellowed Monty, stepping forward and giving Matthew an odd look. ‘Yes, I’ll say it has, it rains almost every bloody day at the moment, I’ll have you know. Come on now,’ he added, ‘enough of the weather.’ He took Matthew’s arm to steer him away from that whining aeroplane which only then agreed to arrest its motors with a few last chugs and swishes. ‘Well, well, same old Matthew,’ he chuckled cautiously, though, strictly speaking, he could not have known very much about the ‘old Matthew’ at all, since they had never met before. Once more he darted an odd, sideways look at Matthew as if trying to weigh him up, while, still chuckling vaguely, he conducted him to the terminal building, a surprisingly up-to-date construction with control tower and observation decks, somewhat resembling a cinema. Matthew remarked on its modern appearance. Singapore must be quite …
‘Oh yeah,’ agreed Monty indifferently. Brightening a little, he added: ‘They have a restaurant there. You don’t feel like some oysters, do you? They fly them in from Hawkesbury River in Australia. Look, that’s not such a bad idea …’
‘Well, not just at the moment, thanks,’ said Matthew, surprised. Monty’s enthusiasm subsided with a grimace. Matthew, still groping for a topic of conversation, said: ‘I must say, I don’t know how you stand this heat.’
‘Heat? This is the coolest part of the day. Wait and see how hot it can get here. I say, is something the matter?’ For Matthew had suddenly stiffened.
‘I think that man is making off with my bags.’ Like many people whose natural inclination is to think the best of people Matthew found it necessary, when travelling, to remain dramatically on the alert to defend himself against malefactors.
‘He bloody well better had be,’ grinned Monty. ‘Otherwise he’ll get hell from me!’
‘You mean …?’
‘Of course. He’s our syce … you know, chauffeur. Now don’t worry, old boy. Just trust old Monty. Everything’s organized. Come on, Sis is waiting for us in the car …’ And with that he led the way out of the building uttering a strange, smothered groan as he went. Matthew hurried after him, filled with pleasure at the prospect of seeing little Kate, to whom he had taken a considerable liking in the course of their one short meeting.
‘Monty, I must thank you for getting me on that plane. Otherwise I might have been stuck in Ceylon for ever, what with the war and so forth.’
‘Think nothing of it. We just pulled a few of the right strings and it was a stroke of luck that there happened to be an empty plane coming our way. You see, the point is this …’
Now they had reached the motor-car and Monty broke off to give the driver some instructions. The latter murmured: ‘Yes, Tuan,’ and stowed Matthew’s suitcases in the back of the vehicle; this was a huge open Pontiac with white tyres, a wide running-board and deep leather seats. A young woman whom Matthew failed to recognize was half reclining on the back seat, holding a cigarette holder in a studied pose. She was wearing a simple white cotton frock and a green turban with two knots which stood up, Hollywood style, like a rabbit’s ears. The haft of a tennis racket was gripped between her bare calves and its glimmering strings between her pretty, pink knees. She ignored Matthew’s greeting and said to Monty: ‘Let’s scram before I die of heat.’ Matthew, disappointed to find this person instead of Kate, tried not to stare at her: this must be Joan Blackett, Kate’s elder sister. Kate had spoken of her as of a superior being, sophisticated beyond measure, terrorizing the young men of the Colony with her irresistible appeal, breaking hearts with as little compunction as if they had been chipped dinner-plates.
‘But the point is this …’ Monty was repeating, a trifle more sonorously than before, now that they were comfortably installed in the Pontiac one on each side of Joan. There was another pause, however, while the young men each lit a Craven A.
‘The point is this,’ he said yet again, puffing out an authoritative cloud of blue smoke. As he did so, Matthew found himself wondering whether Monty Blackett might not on occasion be ever so slightly ponderous and self-important, and though, of course, it had been kind of Monty to come and meet him, nevertheless, an ungrateful voice whispered in Matthew’s ear: ‘What is the point?’ and he glanced quickly at Joan to see whether she was sharing his impatience. But she was looking moodily in another direction… towards the wind-sock waltzing impatiently in the breeze at the end of the aerodrome, or towards a large American limousine with Stars and Stripes fluttering from its bonnet which had come into the airport drive at great speed with a squeal of tyres as it negotiated the bend but was now nosing uncertainly in the direction of the terminal building while the driver made up his mind which way to go. Presently, she turned her turbaned profile and her grey eyes fixed themselves intently on his face. He stirred uneasily.
‘The point is, Matthew, that at the moment the blighters are so anxious for our rubber that they go out of their way to help whenever they can. They’re not usually so helpful, I can assure you. And it doesn’t stop the bloody bureaucrats, those clever merchants in Whitehall, making a nuisance of themselves whenever they get the chance. We’re constantly battling with penpushers in some ministry or other a few thousands miles away.’ He added sententiously: ‘You’ll soon find that out when you have a look at the files in your father’s office. Now what’s all this? What does this cove want?’
While Monty had been speaking the American limousine which had been prowling about uncertainly for a while had at last made up its mind to approach the Pontiac. It came to a stop beside them and an American soldier slid out from behind the wheel and held the door open.
‘Oh lumme, it’s him,’ said Monty, glancing at Joan.
‘Great Scott!’ exclaimed Matthew. ‘I know that bloke. We were at Oxford together. His name’s Jim Ehrendorf … He’s a really wonderful fellow, you must meet him. I was meaning to try and look him up when I got here and now … but wait a sec … Of course, you already know him, don’t you?’ And Matthew clapped a hand to his brow.
‘Yes, we do,’ said Monty. ‘The thing is …’ But without waiting to hear what the thing was, Matthew had leaped out of the Pontiac and was warmly shaking hands with the smiling Ehrendorf. They exchanged a few words, both talking at once. Joan and Monty watched them blankly from the motor-car.
‘I thought I wouldn’t get here in time,’ Ehrendorf was saying as they turned back towards the Pontiac, ‘and I’m tied up for the rest of the day. In fact, I wouldn’t have heard you were arriving at all if it hadn’t been for the chance of meeting up with Walter downtown. Hiya Monty, Hiya Joan!’
‘Hiya,’ said Monty. Joan showed no more sign of acknowledging Ehrendorf’s presence than she had Matthew’s. She looked irritable and said again: ‘For God’s sake, let’s scram … It’s so hot.’
‘How pretty you look, Joan, in your vêtement de sport,’ said Ehrendorf in a way that managed to be both casual and rather tense. ‘ “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” ’
‘I’d far rather you didn’t, if you don’t mind,’ replied Joan sullenly. ‘Let’s go, for God’s sake.’
‘I know his type,’ said Matthew. ‘Next thing, he’ll be trying to tell you you’re “more lovely and more temperate”.’ Both he and Ehrendorf laughed but the two Blacketts did not share their amusement; indeed they both looked rather put out.
Ehrendorf continued to stand uncertainly beside the motorcar, gazing at Joan, who looked away petulantly. Matthew took out a handkerchief, removed his glasses and mopped his streaming face. The heat was dreadful, despite the breeze and the approach of night.
‘I’ve got it,’ said Ehrendorf. ‘Why don’t I ride in with you guys. I’ll tell my driver to follow and then I can go on from there.’ Without waiting for approval Ehrendorf spoke to his driver and then installed himself in the front seat of the Pontiac. Matthew climbed in beside Joan again.
Now the Pontiac was in motion at last; an air of interrogation, of words unspoken, formed over it as it swung out of the aerodrome gates. From near at hand there suddenly came a clamour of music, laughter and singing. A thousand coloured lights twinkled in the gathering dusk through a grove of trees that lay just to their right in the fork of the two roads. Keeling over like a yacht tacking against the wind the Pontiac turned away from the lights on to the Kallang Road.
‘That’s one of the sights,’ Monty said, pointing back with his cigarette shedding sparks. ‘A sort of funfair called The Happy World. They’re going to catch hell, though, unless they do something about blacking out those lights.’
‘There’s a better place called The Great World on Kim Seng Road on the other side of town,’ said Ehrendorf, turning to grin at Matthew. ‘You’ll be able to dance with lovely taxi-girls there. Twenty-five cents a throw.’
Matthew decided not to ask for the moment what a ‘taxi-girl’ was. Instead he said: ‘You didn’t have that natty moustache in Geneva, did you, Jim? And what have you done to your hand?’ For Ehrendorf, though he no longer wore a bandage, still had plaster around his fingers. But to Matthew’s surprise these questions only seemed to embarrass Ehrendorf (was he sensitive about his moustache?) who murmured vaguely that it was nothing, he’d stupidly burned himself a few weeks earlier, and then, without further comment, turned his evidently sensitive moustache to face forward again while he examined the road ahead through the windscreen.
Meanwhile the Pontiac had howled over a bridge and was careering through the twilight at an alarming speed. Every now and then as an obstruction loomed up the driver would brake and swerve violently. The horn blared without pause. The blurred forms of rickshaws, motor-cars and bullock-carts receded rapidly on either side. Once, to avoid a traffic jam which suddenly presented itself, they mounted a verge and without slackening speed thrashed through some sort of vegetation, evidently someone’s garden.
‘Good God!’ thought Matthew. ‘Do they always drive like this?’
‘People in Britain seem to find it amazing,’ Monty was saying, his thoughts still on their earlier conversation, ‘that we should know more about running the rubber business than they do in Whitehall. What they don’t seem to realize is that if we suffer here in Singapore, everything suffers, and that includes their wizard War Effort. It’s so hard to get anything done with these bloody civil servants. Sometimes I wonder if they haven’t all got infantile paralysis!’ And Monty bent his wrist, hunched his shoulders and twisted his face into a highly amusing imitation of a cripple. But Matthew found it hard to smile: he had somehow never found imitations of cripples very entertaining. Monty did not notice this lack of response, however, and shed a great bark of laughter into the humid, sweltering twilight.
Becoming serious again Monty said, pointing at a group of dim buildings on the left: ‘That’s the Firestone factory where last summer’s strikes were started by the Commies. Thanks to the bungling of our little men in the Government they very nearly turned it into a general strike.’ Matthew, who had been beginning to fear that he and Monty might have no common interest, became attentive and ventured to remark that he was interested, not only in political strikes and the relations of native workers to European employers, but also in … well, the ‘colonial experience’ as a whole. But Monty’s response was disappointing.
‘Oh, you’re interested in the “colonial experience”, are you?’ he mumbled indifferently. ‘Well, you’ve come to the right place. You’ll get a basinful of it here, all right.’
Ehrendorf glanced round quickly but without catching Matthew’s eye. His glance, indeed, got no further than Joan’s tennis racket still tightly gripped between her knees as she lolled back against the leather seat: he stared at the racket with great intensity, but only for a moment. Then his moustache was dividing the breeze again.
For some time the spinning back and forth of the Pontiac’s steering-wheel as they swerved to avoid other vehicles had caused the three young people on the back seat to sway from side to side. Joan, because she was in the middle and had less to hold on to, tended to slide more than the others and already once or twice Matthew had found himself pressed against her soft body while she struggled to recover. Now, however, as the Pontiac negotiated a wide curve with muttering tyres and Joan was once more thrown up against him, she appeared to abandon the unequal struggle: she simply lay against him with her head on his shoulder. Matthew wondered whether to push her off but decided it might not seem polite: better to wait for a curve in the opposite direction to do the job for him. In a few moments the car straightened its course again, which should have allowed her to slide back towards her brother, but to his surprise she remained where she was, sprawled against him. And even when, presently, off-side tyres howling like souls in torment, they entered a curve in the opposite direction, she still remained firmly glued to his side, as if all the laws of physics had been suspended in her favour. Then he really did begin to wonder, because that surely could not be right.
Matthew licked his lips, perplexed. He was not quite sure what to make of it all. The truth was that he felt too hot already without having someone pressed against him. He was very much tempted to shove her away to allow the air to circulate. Not that he found the sensation of her body against him altogether disagreeable, he had to admit. But still, it was a bit awkward. Ah, now he caught a tantalizing breath of French perfume on the rushing tropical evening.
‘Watch out for that tennis racket, Sis,’ said Monty with a leer.
Matthew glanced at the turbaned head beside him but Joan showed no sign of having heard her brother’s remark. Nor had Ehrendorf apparently. At any rate, only the neatly barbered back of his head continued to be visible.
Thinking that perhaps some conversation might revive Joan sufficiently to unglue her from his side Matthew asked: ‘Does anyone happen to know what the Singapore Grip is? The RAF blokes in the plane kept telling me to watch out for it but they wouldn’t tell me what it actually was!’ But as a conversational opening this proved a failure. Nobody replied or showed any sign of having heard. ‘How deuced odd they all are!’ thought Matthew crossly. ‘And what’s the matter with Jim Ehrendorf?’ He was tired from his journey, too tired to make an effort with people who were not prepared to make an effort back.
Monty, meanwhile, had pulled the brim of his sun-helmet over his eyes, turned up his collar, stuck his cigarette in the corner of his mouth and was saying in a hoarse, gangster voice: ‘Keep your heads down, you guys. The men from the Ministry of Supply are after us!’ Again the Pontiac shed a great bark of laughter as it raced on into the city, leaving it to float behind among the padding rickshaw coolies who formed a slow stream on either side of the road.
14
Weariness caused Matthew to give up the struggle for a while; he merely lay back against the sighing leather-clad springs. He could not think what was the matter with Ehrendorf who might have been hypnotized the way he continued to gaze stolidly at the road ahead: this was quite unlike the gay and talkative person Matthew had known in Oxford and Geneva.
‘I suppose everyone here is worried about these talks with the Japs in Washington,’ he said presently, hoping again to initiate a conversation. But Ehrendorf still made no reply and Monty, who did not appear to have heard of them, merely asked: ‘What talks?’
Surprised, Matthew explained that Admiral Nomura, the Japanese Ambassador in Washington, had been having talks with the American Government. The Americans wanted the Japs to move their troops out of Indo-China and to agree to peace in the Pacific; the Japs wanted the Americans to stop helping Chiang Kai-shek in their war against China and to unfreeze their assets. Things would look grim if they didn’t agree. That was why he had expected that people in Singapore might be worried.
‘I suppose some people may have the wind up,’ said Monty indifferently.
Matthew decided to give up once more and let events take their course. While he lay slumped in the corner of the seat with a young woman sprawled on his shoulder like a hot compress, one curious picture after another trembled before his eyes, reminding him of the ‘magic lantern’ he had played with as a child. One moment the Pontiac was grumbling and nudging its way through a narrow street hung with banners of Chinese ideographs, the next it was speeding down a wide avenue between silver slopes which flashed and winked at him and proved to be great banks of fish (Matthew was glad of the speed: the stench was so powerful it made you clutch your collar and roll your eyeballs back into your brain). He peered in wonder at the glistening naked bodies of the men working by oil lamps to gut and salt these silvery Himalayas of fish but the next moment again the Pontiac had transformed itself into a stately barge forging it way over a smoky, azure river … Here and there Chinese waded head and shoulders above the blue billows, which presently grew transparent and correspondingly thickened into a darker blue empyrean hanging a few feet overhead; through this blue canopy, like cherubim, disembodied Chinese heads peered down from balconies at the Pontiac making its slow progress beneath.
‘This is the street of the charcoal burners. The bloody Chinese live fifty to a room here in some places.’
Now the clouds of smoke had rolled away to reveal that they were in another, quite different street where from every window and balcony there swung pots of ferns and baskets of flowers. Strings of dim, multi-coloured lanterns hung everywhere. ‘It’s time this lot got weaving with their black-out, too,’ said Monty, and his eyes glittered like cutlery as they roved the balconies above. Suddenly Matthew saw that in the heart of each display of lanterns and flowers there was a beautiful woman set like a jewel.
‘Did we have to come this way, Monty?’ grumbled Joan, removing herself from Matthew’s shoulder. ‘Why didn’t we go along Beach Road?’ Ehrendorf stirred at last and looked around with an uncomfortable smile; meanwhile, the Pontiac continued to advance with Joan firmly sandwiched between the two perspiring Englishmen on the back seat. Certain of the women on the balconies above stuck languorous poses, or stretched out a slender leg as if to straighten a stocking. One idly lifted her skirt as if to check that her underwear was all in order (alas, she appeared to have forgotten it altogether); another forced a breast to bulge out of its hiding and palped it thoughtfully.
‘Look here, Monty,’ Joan protested, ‘this is a bit thick. You did this on purpose.’
‘Did what on purpose?’
‘You know perfectly well. And it’s not very clever.’
‘In Singapore you can see things they don’t mention at posh finishing schools,’ exulted Monty, ‘but that’s no reason to get in a bate.’ He added for Matthew’s benefit: ‘This is respectable compared with Lavender Street yonder where the troops go. You could have a “colonial experience” there all right!’
So wide was the Pontiac, so narrow the streets of this part of the city, that it was a miracle they could pass through them at all. Even so, they frequently had to slow to a walking pace while the syce made some fine decisions, an inch on this side, an inch on that. On one such occasion a figure sprang suddenly out of the twilight and landed with a thump on the running-board causing Matthew to flinch back, startled. But the figure proved to be only a small bundle of skin and bone wrapped in rags, a Chinese boy of six or seven years of age. This child clung to the side of the motor-car with one small grubby hand while he cupped the other under Matthew’s nose, at the same time dancing up and down on the running-board with a dreadful urgency. But more distressing still, the boy began a rapid, artificial panting like that of a wounded animal.
The Pontiac had cleared the last of the narrow streets and could now accelerate … but still the child clung on, panting more desperately than ever. Meanwhile, the syce was steering with one hand and using the other to reach behind Ehrendorf and hammer at the little fingers gripping the chassis.
‘Stop!’ cried Matthew to the driver. ‘Stop! … Make him stop!’ he shouted at Ehrendorf. But Ehrendorf sat as if in a trance while the Pontiac hurtled through the dusk swaying violently, the child panting, the syce cursing and hammering.
‘No father, no mother, no makan, no whisky soda!’ howled the child.
Monty had calmly selected a couple of coins from his pocket and was holding them out, almost in the child’s reach, and making him grab for them with his free hand. Having enjoyed this game for a little he negligently tossed the coins out of the speeding car. A moment later the boy dropped off the running-board and vanished into the rushing darkness in their wake.
‘That’s one of their favourite tricks. The word makan means “grub” by the way, and you could probably do with some yourself, I should think. We thought we’d take you first to the Mayfair to leave your things and then on to our house for some supper.’
They were now on a wider thoroughfare; in front of them rattled a green trolley-bus: from the tips of its twin poles a cascade of blue-white sparks dribbled against the darkening sky. Despite the advance of darkness the heat seemed only to increase. The sun had long since dropped out of sight somewhere behind Sumatra to the west but in the sky it had left a vast striated blanket of magenta which seemed to radiate a heat of its own like the bars of an electric grill.
Soon they were on a long straight road, still lined with Chinese shophouses but with here and there an occasional block of European shops or offices. This was Orchard Road, Monty explained, and that drive that curved away to the right led up to Government House. The large white building a little further along was the Cold Storage: in there homesick Britons could buy food that reminded them of home.
Presently they turned off Orchard Road and found themselves in a residential district of winding, tree-lined streets and detached bungalows with now and then a small block of flats set amidst tennis courts. They lurched up a sharply curving slope past a tiny banana plot.
‘It may not be much … but given the hordes of brass hats commandeering living quarters in Singapore these days one is lucky to find a roof at all. Here we are, anyway.’
The Pontiac keeled over sharply and pulled off the road with groaning tyres. The Mayfair Building was a vast and rambling bungalow built on a score of fat, square pillars. Because the ground here was on something of a slope these pillars grew taller as they approached the front of the building, exaggerating their perspective and giving them the appearance of a platoon on the march beneath an enormous burden. The bungalow itself was encased in louvred wooden shutters and open balconies, along the sides of which partly unrolled blinds of split-bamboo hung beneath the great jutting eaves. The apex of the bungalow’s roof of loose red tiles was left open in the manner of a dovecot to allow warm air to escape, and was crowned by a second, smaller roof of red tiles. Despite the metropolitan grandeur of its name the Mayfair Building had a slightly decrepit air.
While Joan performed a quick and efficient inspection of herself in a hand-mirror, Matthew got out of the car and prepared to follow Monty.
‘I won’t come in with you, Matthew,’ Ehrendorf said. ‘I’m busy right now but I’ll see you later. We’ll get together real soon, OK?’ Now that he, too, had got out of the car and stood there, an elegant figure in his uniform, it seemed to Matthew that he looked more his former cheerful and confident self. They shook hands, agreed to telephone each other and then Matthew followed Monty around the side of the building to the main entrance. Here he glimpsed a tennis court, disused, from whose baked mud surface giant thistles had grown up and now waited like silent skeleton players in the gloom. Beyond the tennis court the compound was walled in on each side by a powerful tropical undergrowth and the encroaching jungle.
Gesturing in the darkness Monty said: ‘There’s a recreation hut and a lot of gym stuff over there. I expect you know that your father was keen on that sort of thing? What? You didn’t? He was very partial to rippling muscles and gleaming torsos.’ Monty chuckled cautiously. ‘This way. Watch your step.’
They made their way up protesting wooden steps to a front door that stood open and was plainly two or three inches too big for its frame. As Monty dragged it open further the hinges shrieked. He went inside. Matthew, having paused to polish his glasses, was about to follow him when he heard a faint scuffling sound from the darkness on the other side of the house. He heard the sound of heavy, indignant breathing, then silence followed and, after a few moments, a long, melancholy sigh, barely audible against the hum of the tropical night. In another moment he heard footsteps and Joan emerged from the gloom.
The interior of the bungalow exuded the unloved air of houses that have had to endure temporary occupation by a succession of transient lodgers. Matthew surmised that his father had not taken a great interest in his material surroundings.
‘What a dump!’ said Joan, wrinkling her perfect nose as she peered in.
‘It’s seen better days, I admit,’ agreed Monty. In the obscurity Matthew sensed rather than saw that the furiture was chipped, the paintwork peeling and the woodwork so warped that drawers and cupboards would no longer quite open, nor windows altogether close. He was surprised to think that it was in these modest surroundings that his father, a man of wealth, had spent so much of the latter part of his life. ‘Perhaps the old chap was not such an ogre after all.’
As he advanced into a wide verandah room scattered with darker masses which might be furniture, two floorboards sang in counterpoint under his shoes. A middle-aged man who had evidently been brooding by himself on the verandah in the now almost complete darkness came on a serpentine course through the sagging rattan furniture to meet them, snapping on a light switch as he passed and bathing the room in an electric light which at first flickered like a cinema projector but presently settled down to a more steady glow.
‘Major Brendan Archer,’ said Monty casting his sun-helmet away into the shadows. ‘This is Matthew Webb.’ He added to Matthew: ‘The Major has been more or less running things since your father’s illness.’
Matthew and the Major shook hands. The Major came vaguely to attention and said indistinctly: ‘I’d like to say how sorry … hm … your father …’ With a muffled bark indicating emotion he stood at ease again The Major had a mild, vaguely worried appearance. His very thin hair had been carefully smoothed with water and brushed straight back, revealing only the finest of partings. It was supplemented by a rather doleful moustache.
‘I see you’re looking at my moustache,’ the Major said, causing Matthew to start guiltily. ‘That blighter Cheong got at it with the scissors. He said he’d be careful but of course he got carried away. Took too much off one side.’ It was true. The Major’s moustache, when you looked at it, was definitely lopsided. The young people peered at it respectfully.
‘How sensitive people are about their moustaches out here, thought Matthew. ‘It must be the climate.’
‘Why don’t you prune the other side a bit?’ suggested Monty. ‘Even it up?’
‘Mustn’t look like Hitler.’
‘No, of course not,’ agreed Monty. To Matthew he explained: ‘The Major’s been trying to re-enlist for active service. He can’t be bothered with the Japs. Defend the old homeland, eh, Major?’
‘Oh, I’m afraid the war will be over by the time I get back to England. One worries, you know, about people at home in the air-raids. I have a couple of young nieces in London … well, not really nieces … more god-daughters than nieces, in South Kensington, actually, though strictly speaking …’
Monty interrupted: ‘You don’t say so, Major? I’ve heard that the entire might of the Luftwaffe is being thrown against South Kensington.’ To Matthew he said: ‘Come on, I’ll show you around quickly and then we’ll beetle off.’ They left the Major looking baffled.
‘Old bore,’ said Monty.
As they made their way round the bungalow Matthew was conscious of Joan’s blank eyes and neatly plucked eyebrows turning towards him from time to time, but she still had not addressed a word directly to him. Swinging louvred shutters divided one room from the next, there seemed to be no doors here except for the bathroom and one elaborately marked ‘Board of Directors’. They peered into his room which contained nothing except a long, deeply scratched table and a dozen or so chairs. Above the table a huge electric fan laboured noisily. Monty switched on the light at the door. A wiry, middle-aged man clad only in shorts lay stretched on the table, asleep with his mouth open. Monty led the way over to inspect him, saying: ‘This is Dupigny. I gather he’s supposed to have some sort of job here, God knows what, though. Hey, wake up!’ Monty shook him. ‘François is what is known as a “sleeping partner”,’ he jeered. ‘Come on, wake up! The Japs have landed in the garden!’ But the man on the table merely uttered a groan and turned over. They retreated, Monty saying over his shoulder: ‘François used to be a big-wig in the Indo-Chinese Government until Pétain booted him out. He’s convinced Jap parachutists are going to land any moment.’
Now at last they were approaching the rooms which had been set aside for the Chairman: a swinging door upholstered in green felt had once divided this part of the bungalow from the rest but now, removed from its hinges, it was merely propped against the wall. Beyond it, nevertheless, one could discern an improvement in the quality and condition of the furnishings. First, they came to an outer room used as an office. Matthew had expected a room that was perfectly bleak and bare of ornament, to match his own view of his father’s character. To his surprise the walls were crowded with pictures and photographs of all kinds. He barely had time to glance at them; besides, the presence of the young Blacketts inhibited him. But what was he to make of this sepia photograph showing his father perhaps thirty years ago, holding a tennis racket and with his arm cheerfully around the neck of his smiling partner or opponent? Or of this one of his father good-humouredly presenting something to a group of neatly suited Chinese, each of them with his trousers at half mast? Surely the old tyrant had not smiled more than once in his entire life!
They peered into the bedroom which lay beyond, a great high-ceilinged room which contained two massive Edwardian wardrobes, a narrow iron bed with a mosquito net hanging knotted above it like a furled sail, and a bedside table on which medicine bottles still crowded around the stem of a table-light. Matthew, harrowed by the sight of these medicine bottles, withdrew to the office once more. Joan had remained in the background plucking with finger and thumb at the back of her turban. The driver had brought in Matthew’s suitcases and now carried them into the bedroom.
‘There should be a Chinese boy around somewhere. He’ll unpack for you. Let’s go and get something to eat.’
A balding young man was hovering diffidently at the door of the office as they passed through. He cleared his throat when he saw Monty and said: ‘Monty, I wonder could I have a quick word with you?’
‘No, you bloody can’t. I’m busy. And what are you doing here, anyway? You’re supposed to be out on the bloody estate. We don’t pay you to hang around Singapore.’
‘I just came in this evening, Monty. You see, it’s rather important and I had already mentioned it some time ago to Mr Webb before his illness …’
‘You just came in this evening, did you, Turner? Well, you can bugger off back this evening, too. If you aren’t satisfied with your pay you can send us a letter of resignation and join the bloody Army. Got it?’
‘But I’ve just spoken to Major Archer and he …’
‘I don’t care who you’ve spoken to. I’m telling you to hop it. Get going. Scram!’
‘I could eat a horse,’ said Joan suddenly, addressing Matthew for the first time and even smiling at him. ‘I only had a sandwich at the Cold Storage for lunch. Actually, I’m trying to lose weight. How much do you think I weigh? Go on, have a guess.’ Matthew could only blink at her, however, too astonished to reply.
The young man’s face had turned very pale and his forehead glistened with perspiration: there was clearly nothing for it but for him to depart, and he did so, but without making any abrupt movement. His image seemed gradually to grow indistinct until presently one could make out pieces of furniture where he had been standing and then he had faded away completely.
‘Eight stone exactly!’ exclaimed Joan in triumph, clapping her hands. ‘I knew you couldn’t. Nobody can. You see, it’s partly the way I dress.’
‘That miserable cove,’ Monty explained in a self-satisfied tone, ‘is Robin Turner, the manager of your estate in Johore, though you’d hardly think so the amount of time he spends in Singapore. That little so-and-so and I were at school together and I pulled a few strings to get him a job out here when jobs weren’t easy to come by. What d’you know? Within a couple of years he’d got himself married to a stengah and his career out here was as good as finished.’
‘A stengah?’
‘Half one thing and half the other … a Eurasian … a mixed drink! You can tell ’em by their chichi accent … sing-song like Welsh. He’s been trying to get her a job as a governess in a white household but nobody wants their kids to end up with that accent … no fear! In this part of the world, Matthew, people don’t mind who you have your fun with, provided you do it discreetly (they’re pretty broad-minded about that), but they get shirty if you try to mix things socially. Quite a few young fools like Turner have lost their jobs or missed promotion with European companies because they thought they could suit themselves. Young Turner had to resign from the clubs he’d joined, of course, double quick. I warned him it would happen but no, he knew better.’ Monty heaved a sigh: his good-nature had been tried to the limit. ‘Anyway, you’ve seen the set-up. Let’s go and get something to eat.’
Matthew glanced at Joan. Her moment of animation had passed; now she was looking down her nose and plucking delicately at her chest, evidently rearranging whatever she wore under her frock. ‘Isn’t François supposed to be coming?’ she wanted to know.
On their way back to the verandah they came across Dupigny, now clad in a billowing white suit, tying his tie by the light of a candle. He was a gaunt, dignified man in his fifties. He said in careful English: ‘I shall follow you, Monty. I look forward with delicious alarm to discover what your cook has prepared for us.’
15
‘My dear boy, it gives me great pleasure to welcome you at last to this house and, I should say, to these Straits Settlements which your father did so much to build up in his lifetime.’ Monty and Joan had slipped off to change, leaving Matthew to introduce himself as best he could to the elder Blacketts whom he had with some difficulty located in a palatial drawing-room. He had often tried to picture Walter Blackett: he had supposed him to be someone very large and commanding. As it turned out, the man with whom he had just shaken hands was certainly commanding, but only his head was large: it loomed over a compact body and short legs and was covered in thick bristles of white hair which had collected here and there like drifts of unmelted snow on a stark mountainside; further white bristles supplied moustache and eyebrows: from beneath the latter, eyes of an alarming pale blue examined Matthew with interest. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘and meet Sylvia.’
In her day Mrs Blackett had been considered beautiful, but all that now remained of her good looks were a pair of cornflower blue eyes, a shade or two darker than Walter’s, set in a puffy, handsome, disappointed face. She still retained, however, some of the mannerisms of a woman accustomed to being admired for her appearance: a habit of throwing back her head to shake away the ringlets which had once tumbled charmingly over her smooth cheeks, or of opening her eyes very wide while you were talking to her, as if what you were saying was of enthralling interest. It made little difference whether you spoke about the emergence of a Swahili literature, about training schemes for electrical engineers, or about the best way to stuff a field-mouse. She would still gaze at you as if fascinated, her lovely eyes open very wide. Sometimes this automatic fascination could have a numbing effect on her interlocutor.
Looking at Mrs Blackett’s disappointed, once-beautiful face, Matthew suddenly recognized that Joan was a beauty, though until this moment her appearance had not made much impression on him. It was as if, looking into her mother’s faded features, he was confronted by a simplified version of Joan’s and could say to himself: ‘So that’s the sort of face it’s supposed to be!’ It was a process not very different, he supposed, from thinking a girl was beautiful because she reminded you of a painting by Botticelli: if you had never seen the painting you would not have noticed her. But wait, what was it the Blacketts were saying?
For some moments the Blacketts, each ignoring the other’s voice as only a married couple can, had been raining statements, questions and declarations of one kind or another on the already sufficiently bewildered Matthew. In the course of the next few minutes of incoherent conversation they touched on the war, his journey, rationing in Britain, his father’s illness, his father’s will (Walter took him by the arm and steered him away down the other end of the room, thinking this as good a time as any to remind Matthew of the responsibilities which would accompany his inheritance, but his wife uttered shrill complaints at being abandoned on her sofa and they were obliged to return), the Blitz, the approach of the monsoon, the rubber market and his journey again. Then Walter was summoned to the telephone.
While Walter was absent Mrs Blackett took hold of Matthew’s wrist: she wanted to tell him something. ‘I think you met my children, Monty and Joan, earlier this evening, didn’t you? You know, I hardly think of them as my children at all. We are more like three friends. We discuss, oh, everything together as if we were equals.’
Matthew, who could think of no reply to this confidence, scratched his ear and gazed at Mrs Blackett sympathetically. But where was Kate? he wondered aloud. He had been looking forward to seeing her again. Was she away somewhere?
‘Oh, she was here a moment ago,’ said Mrs Blackett vaguely. There was silence for a few moments. Walter’s voice, speaking emphatically, could be heard from the adjoining room. ‘Yes, just three friends,’ added Mrs Blackett despondently.
Presently she groped for Matthew’s sleeve and with a tug, drew him to his feet. She wanted to introduce him to the people who had just come into the room. But these newcomers, on closer inspection, proved to be merely her children, or ‘friends’, Monty and Joan. She had evidently thought they might be someone more interesting for at the last moment she hung back, murmuring: ‘Oh, I thought it might be Charlie.’
Monty and Joan, ignoring their mother, subsided into armchairs and ordered drinks from a Chinese servant who moved silently from one person to another. They both looked hot, though the air here was pleasantly cool. Joan had exchanged her white cotton frock for a dress of green silk with padded shoulders and leg-of-mutton sleeves. Now that she had removed her turban her sable ringlets tumbled charmingly over her cheeks. Matthew, however, could not help staring at her legs; if he feasted his eyes on them so greedily it was not because they were unusually well shaped (though they were) but because she was wearing silk stockings which had become a luxury in England in the past year. Unfortunately, both Monty and Joan had noticed the direction of his gaze; he saw them exchange a sly glance.
‘Kate!’
Kate had been hovering for some time in the next room anxiously awaiting the right moment to make a casual entry. She had been allowed to wear her best dress for besides Matthew an important RAF personage had been invited to supper. Now here she was, looking self-conscious. There was a moment of awkwardness, then she and Matthew shook hands. Kate blushed furiously and, stepping back, almost fell over a chair she had not noticed.
‘You know what?’
‘What?’
‘If we were having steak for supper we could grill it on Kate’s cheeks.’
‘Mother, will you make him stop!’
‘Really, Monty,’ said Mrs Blackett wearily.
Snatching up a magazine Kate went to throw herself down on a sofa at the other end of the room. She did not open the magazine, however, but instead picked up a Siamese cat which had been curled up on the floor and began stroking and kissing it, ignoring the rest of the company.
‘It’s so nice to have a chance to talk,’ said Mrs Blackett, ‘before the others arrive.’
There was a murmur of assent but then silence fell again. Monty glanced at his watch; Joan yawned behind scarlet fingernails. Kate continued to stroke the cat at great speed, occasionally planting a kiss on the wincing animal.
Walter came back presently and took a seat beside Matthew, explaining that he had invited Brooke-Popham, the Commander-in-Chief, Far East, and a member of his staff to supper; earlier in the day he had attended a meeting with them about rice distribution. For the truth was, he went on, that in the event of hostilities in the Pacific, Malaya could find her food supplies in jeopardy, at least in the long run, because the greater part of the country’s rice had to be imported. Ten years of effort (he himself had served on the Rice Cultivation Committee set up in 1930) still had not induced the native smallholders to grow rice instead of rubber. They were too idle. What could you do with such people?
‘I suppose they think that rubber is more profitable,’ suggested Matthew.
‘I suppose they do,’ agreed Walter.
‘And they’re right, aren’t they?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that, exactly.’ Walter’s tone was casual but he glanced sharply at Matthew as he spoke. ‘There have been great variations in demand, of course, for rubber. Point is they can’t eat it in bad times. Otherwise it would be the perfect crop for a country like this. Rice involves too much hard work. Anyway, there it is, we have to import it in vast quantities to feed the estate workers.’
‘Perhaps the estates should grow rice …’ murmured Matthew. ‘It seems unfair to expect the smallholders to grow a less profitable crop simply to allow the estates to go on growing the more profitable crop …’
‘Ah, but we haven’t agreed that rice is less profitable.’
‘In that case why do the estates …?’
‘Drat!’ exclaimed Mrs Blackett, hearing a distant bell. ‘They’re arriving already and just as we were beginning to have a nice talk.’
Walter had risen before Matthew had time to finish what he was saying. But even so, Mrs Blackett reached the door before he did. It opened to admit Dupigny in his billowing white suit. He and Mrs Blackett exchanged greetings. As she made to lead him deeper into the room she said: ‘You, François, who always keep so well in touch, must tell us what you think.’
‘Of what, Mrs Blackett?’
‘Of the situation,’ she replied vaguely.
‘My dear Mrs Blackett, if you want my opinion the Japs will overrun us in a twinkling. First they exhaust us in the jungle. Then they seize us by the throat.’
‘You terrify me, François, when you say such things. Except for Matthew you are the first to arrive so you must pay the penalty and come and sit down here with us for a few minutes … though I can see that what you have to tell us will scare us out of our wits.’
‘My apologies,’ murmured Dupigny with the exquisite tact of the diplomat and man of the world. He was evidently apologizing not for having cast Mrs Blackett into a state of alarm but for having arrived too early, for thus he had interpreted the words ‘first to arrive’.
Mrs Blackett, leading the way across the room, said over her shoulder: ‘How smart you look, François! I’m so glad to see you are managing in spite of your difficulties.’
In the meantime, Monty had slipped into the chair beside Matthew vacated by his father, and in a malicious whisper explained to him that Dupigny was penniless! a beggar! a total pauper! and that his mother, of course, knew very well that she was being pursued across the drawing-room not only by Dupigny but by his entire wardrobe as well, for the fellow was still clad in every single garment he had been wearing when he had slipped away from Saigon with General Catroux, give or take the odd pair of shorts or shoes he had been able to borrow off Major Archer who luckily for Dupigny happened to be an old chum of his from the Great War.
While Matthew listened to all this and watched Dupigny stoop to brush Joan’s knuckles with his smiling lips, he could not help wondering whether he would ever find anything in common with Monty. Dupigny looked up, still smiling, his attentions to Joan’s knuckles complete.
‘Well, François, what’s the joke?’
‘I smile because I remember that yesterday for the first time in my life I have been mistaken pour un macchabée … for a corpse.’
‘For a corpse?’ cried Joan, suddenly becoming vivacious again. She was evidently a willing victim of Dupigny’s charm and polished manners. ‘I don’t believe you, François. What a terrible liar he is!’ she grumbled to her mother.
‘But precisely, for a corpse!’ Dupigny struck an attitude. ‘I am just leaving the bungalow when a Chinese gentleman approaches and says to me: “Tuan, are you dead?” I assure him that to the best of my knowledge I am still alive …’ Dupigny paused to acknowledge the smiles of his audience.
‘ “But, Tuan,” says our Chinese friend, “are you not then seriously wounded?” On the contrary I tell him that I am never feeling better in my life … “But then, Tuan,” he says, almost in tears, “you must at least be ‘walking wounded’ otherwise you would not be here in this street!” ’
‘I know, it was an air-raid practice!’ exclaimed Joan. ‘I bet your Chinaman was wearing an ARP armband and a tin hat. But I thought that for corpses they always used Boy Scouts. Does this mean that they are now using grown men?’
‘Hélas! Every day they grow more ambitious!’
New arrivals had been shown into the room in the meantime and Mrs Blackett set off once more towards the door, stumbling against a low foot-stool on the way, for the truth was that her lovely blue eyes were far-sighted and she should have worn glasses. Two officers had just entered. One of these newcomers was Air Chief-Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, a solidly built gentleman in his early sixties whose appearance suggested slightly baffled good nature. He had a square head, bald on top and with very thin hair plastered down at the sides above large, protruding ears. Beneath his white walrus moustache his open mouth lent him the air of wary incomprehension one sometimes sees in people who are not quite sure they have heard you correctly. Each of his powerful forearms cradled a shaggy bundle of documents which he was now trying to shuffle into a single bundle so that he might grasp the hand of Mrs Blackett. But in doing so a few sheets detached themselves and subsided in a series of gentle arcs to the floor. As he stooped to retrieve them, a few more slipped from his grasp and his air of bewilderment increased. At his side a tall, saturnine staff officer in the uniform of a Major-General watched without expression as the Commander-in-Chief scrabbled on the floor to assemble his papers. ‘You’d better let me, sir,’ he said taking the bundle and stowing it firmly under his arm. Then he put his swagger-stick down on a side table; an instant later he neatly scooped it up again as Mrs Blackett, turning, failed to notice the table and stumbled into it. She smiled her thanks to Brooke-Popham who had kindly steadied her with a hand to her arm. After a moment’s hesitation the General put his stick down again.
Matthew’s attention was now diverted by Monty’s voice in his ear, whispering a further malicious commentary, this time on the Commander-in-Chief himself: it was common knowledge among those ‘in the know’ that despite his grandiose title Brooke-Popham had frightful difficulty finding anybody who was actually subject to his authority. Certainly not the Navy. And the Governor, too, if he wanted could go his own sweet way. And even General Percival and Air-Marshal Pulford who had replaced the dreaded Bond and Babington still took many of their orders from the War Office and Air Ministry respectively leaving poor old Brookers in his office at the Naval Base with nothing to do but stick flags in maps and, to make things worse …
But Matthew had to struggle to his feet to shake hands with the Commander-in-Chief. Brooke-Popham shook hands firmly with Matthew and gave him a somewhat rabbity smile. Then he moved on to greet Walter and his place was immediately taken by a dapper gentleman who was following in the Commander-in-Chief’s wake: this was Dr Brownley, the Blacketts’ family doctor. The Doctor was somewhat distraught this evening for, earlier in the day, after weeks, even months of inner struggle and deliberation, he had purchased an article he had seen in John Little’s window in Raffles Place, an article he had longed and lusted for with the passion of a lover. But now that it had at last become his, somehow the expected consummation had not taken place. Since buying the wretched thing, which he could ill afford, he had scarcely given it a thought. The joyous fever to which he had been subject for months had suddenly left him. ‘What’s wrong with me?’ he wondered, surreptitiously taking his own pulse. And now another distressing thought occurred to him: ‘This makes eighteen times in a row that they’ve invited me here and I still haven’t invited them back!’ ‘You must come to us one of these days’, he muttered as he shook hands with Matthew, rolling his eyes in a rather odd and desperate way … (but fortunately the fellow didn’t seem to hear).
‘D’you really think the Japs will attack us?’ Joan was asking Dupigny.
‘Without a doubt,’ replied Dupigny emphatically, and an expression of surprise and dismay passed fleetingly over Brooke-Popham’s honest features as he overheard these words.
‘My dear, François is in a most macabre mood this evening,’ said Mrs Blackett to her daughter. ‘I advise you not to listen to him. He has already had me shaking like a jelly.’
‘Ah, but it is not amusing, I assure you,’ said Dupigny, seeing that his words had caused Joan to smile, for with Dupigny it was often hard to tell whether he was joking or not and he frequently said the most outrageous things with a perfectly straight face.
‘But I understand, François, that the Japanese specialize in chopping the heads off Frenchmen. They raise a sword above their heads and go … chop! And Monsieur’s head is rolling in the gutter. They say it is quite a sight. I think I shall take my knitting like Madame whatever her name was.’
‘You think I am joking, Joan. Not at all! You forget that I know something of them, the Japanese. But what is the good?’ he added, turning to Matthew as Joan went off laughing. ‘You British are so serious. And when you think of France it is always in the manner of that grand emmerdeur, Charles Dickens. As for your self-confidence, that is something miraculous! Did you know,’ he pursued, taking Matthew by the arm and leading him aside, ‘that your Governor, Sir Thomas, went on holiday for eight months despite the outbreaking of war? That is an example of your phlegmatic British behaviour which fills a poor Frenchman like myself with awe, with admiration and, it must be admitted, with alarm!’ He surveyed Matthew with an ironical smile.
‘But never mind about that. Let me explain to you instead about this Air-Marshal. Sir Popham, for he is a most unusual sight. I refer not to his appearance, which is, I agree, awe-inspiring … but to his very presence here in this room. It is something quite unusual.’ And Dupigny went on to explain to Matthew in an undertone (how fond everyone seemed to be of whispering assessments of each other’s behaviour behind their backs!) that years of living in Singapore had, it was well known, instilled in Mrs Blackett a deep contempt for the Armed Forces. It had been, in peacetime, a most surprising sight to see her heaping abuse on the old and respected profession of arms, members of which she had for years resolutely refused to invite to her table. Why, even Major Archer, the least martial of men, given an introduction to the Blacketts while making his first tour of the Far East in 1937, had had to be warned to demobilize himself before calling. The poor fellow would otherwise have left a card on which, printed in spidery script for all to see, was his guilty secret: Major Brendan de S. Archer. And Dupigny laughed heartily at the thought.
The fact was, he went on, that Mrs Blackett, though charming in every way, was something of a snob and this very drawing-room was the meeting-place of one of the most exclusive circles on the island, scarcely even rivalled by Government House. For, as Mrs Blackett willingly used to admit, she had one advantage over the Governor. She was not obliged, as he was, to invite the rabble of dignitaries, military and civilian, whom the war was bringing to Singapore. She could invite whom she pleased. ‘All those depressing generals!’ she used to exclaim sometimes in the presence of her own more carefully selected guests. ‘Poor Lady Thomas!’
And yet, not even the Blacketts, as it transpired, had been able to prevent the invasion of their circle by the War. Since the beginning of hostilities in Europe there had been progressive signs of weakening. He, Dupigny, had been there in person on one occasion when Mrs Blackett had asked Walter whether she should not relax this prohibition of military men from her dining-room ‘in the interests of the War Effort’. An admiral or two, perhaps?
Walter had stroked his chin as he pondered his wife’s difficult question, groping for the reply of a frank, straightforward sort of man. Well, no, he did not think so. After all, one’s principles don’t change simply because there’s a war on. The problem, after all, was not that the odd admiral was short of food, but that he was tedious company. This had not changed. Very likely it had become worse. With a war raging in Europe the admiral would doubtless feel encouraged to discourse interminably on military and naval matters at the expense of … well, of the more important things in life.
And so Mrs Blackett had continued for some time to exclude the Forces (except for the Major, of course, who was in any case masquerading as a plain civilian and who had had no connection with the Army in twenty years). But then, little by little, as Hitler had advanced through Europe, the Allies had made corresponding advances into the Blacketts’ exclusive circle … a colonel here, an air commodore there, in civilian clothes at first but, presently, in uniform. ‘Until today we have the pleasure of seeing an Air-Marshal and a General sipping their pahits among us as if it were the most natural thing in the world!’
Matthew had listened with interest and amusement to this discourse. Dupigny was an entertaining companion and he would have liked to hear more about the Blacketts. But at this moment a distant gong sounded and supper was announced. Joan had disappeared for a few moments but returned just in time to catch her father’s eye as they were going into the dining-room. Walter raised his eyebrows as if to enquire: ‘Well, what do you think?’ Joan did not have to be told what her father’s raised eyebrows referred to. She had just slipped into the dining-room ahead of the guests to rearrange the name-cards by the various places, allotting herself a seat where she knew the light would fall to particular advantage on her long neck and delicate features, casting a special sheen on her sable curls when viewed from a certain other place. She smiled at her father and discreetly raised her thumb. Walter, in turn, did not have to be told that his daughter expected to make short work of the task she had set herself.
16
On his way into the dining-room Matthew, attempting to demonstrate to the Doctor the width of a stream where he had once caught a number of trout, struck Mrs Blackett a blow in the stomach that robbed her of her breath for a moment or two. A fuss then took place. Matthew fell back, disgraced, while the other guests crowded around to help her to a chair, offering her drinks of water and telling each other to move back and give her air. She sat there, gasping. Matthew watched her from a distance, discomfited and surprised: it had not seemed to him that he had struck her very hard. The impression left on his knuckles by the blow was already fading but he was pretty certain that it had never amounted to a good, solid punch, the sort that one might have expected would drop one’s hostess to her knees. The unworthy thought occurred to him that Mrs Blackett might be putting it on a bit. But women were, after all, members of a gentler sex. It was distressing, whichever way one looked at it. He had been hoping to start off on a better footing with the Blacketts.
Meanwhile, Dr Brownley, at Mrs Blackett’s side, kept saying: ‘Highly interesting … Highly interesting’ as if to himself; this caused Walter to look at him askance but actually the Doctor had been saying ‘Highly interesting’ to Matthew before the blow had been struck and was now merely repeating it. Sometimes a word or a phrase would get stuck in the Doctor’s mind and rattle around in it for hours without any apparent reason. Occasionally, if by misfortune the phrase expressed some powerful image, it might stay in his mind for days or weeks. Once, for example, he had heard a dentist admonishing a patient who was inclined to neglect her teeth: ‘Your nose will meet your chin!’ For several weeks this phrase, alien, violent, rapacious, eating up all other thoughts, had whirled around his mind like a rat in a refrigerator. ‘Your nose will meet your chin!’ He had thought he would never get rid of it. In the end only the desire for an article he happened to see in Whiteaways had been sufficient to suffocate it. ‘Highly interesting,’ he murmured as Mrs Blackett, getting to her feet with a sigh, declared herself sufficiently recovered for the dinner to proceed.
This incident, fortunately trivial, did serve a useful purpose, however. It reminded Matthew that he must keep a stern watch over his comportment while at the dinner-table. It was not simply a question of table manners, though years of eating by himself with his eyes on a book beyond his plate rather than on the plate itself (how often had he been roused from his thoughts by something hot and slippery, a grilled fish, say, or a great bundle of spaghetti, dropping into his lap from an incorrectly angled fork!) certainly left room for improvement in that respect. No, it was more a tendency to grow over-excited in the course of what he knew should be an urbane discussion, to utter great shouts of derision at the opinions of his table companions, to gloat over them excessively when he found them guilty of faulty reasoning or some heretical assumption. Next day he would realize, of course, that he had behaved boorishly and would be filled with remorse, but next day it would be too late. Alas, more than once in Geneva he had found a door closed to him after he had allowed himself to get carried away. With the Blacketts he must watch his step!
Often had the Blacketts wondered precisely how Matthew had spent the years since he had left Oxford. Why had his infrequent letters been sent from hotels in remote corners of Europe? What was it, at a time of life when most young men decide to settle down in a home of their own, that had kept him flitting across frontiers like a lost soul? While these questions were being put to him Mrs Blackett, looking tired after her ordeal, glanced around the table to make sure that everything was in order; her gaze lingered for a moment on an unoccupied chair next to Joan and a shadow of concern passed over her features. Meanwhile, a bowl of soused fish was being proffered by the ‘boys’ to each guest in turn.
Oh, the answer to that was simple, Matthew explained, fishing in the dark tide of vinegar and peppercorns. He had been working for a charitable organization in Geneva called the Committee for International Understanding, vaguely connected with the League of Nations.
‘My dear boy,’ said Walter, ‘I’d be surprised to learn that a single one of those charitable organizations ever did a damn thing that was any practical use to anybody. Geneva, if you ask me, is a city of hot air and hypocrites and that’s all there is to say about it.’ Walter hesitated, glancing at Dupigny who appeared to be rolling his eyes in horror at this opinion of Geneva, uncongenial, perhaps, to a former functionary of the Ministère des Colonies: but it might simply have been that Dupigny was flinching away from the fumes of vinegar rising from the bowl of soused fish which had now been offered to him in turn. He somewhat grimly captured a piece of fish on the serving spoon, inspected it for a moment, sniffed at it, then dropped it back into the dish, indicating to the ‘boy’ that he did not want any.
‘These idealistic committees are a waste of time and as for the League itself …!’
Matthew chewed his fish calmly even though such a remark would normally have provoked him to vociferous argument: lucky that he had been reminded of his weaknesses a few moments earlier! Moreover, in a sense Walter was right. It was true that the Committee for International Understanding, which was merely one of hundreds of such idealistic barnacles clinging to the hull (already low in the water) of the great League itself, had not achieved any visible success in all the years he had worked for it. In the early days he had spent hour after hour writing letters to politicians urging them to good behaviour in the interests of the ‘world community’. Invariably these letters had been answered in vague but polite terms by private secretaries who hinted that there were grounds for optimism. But as for any concrete improvement, well, that was another matter! All that one could say for sure was that ‘out there’ (Matthew had spent hours during his first winter in Geneva gazing out through the rain-rinsed window of his office in the direction of the lake), in the real world there was a sort of counter-Committee composed of private secretaries whose letter-writing labours exactly mirrored his own and, it had gradually dawned on him, were equally without significance.
And what a dismal place Geneva had been! The steadily falling rain through which one might occasionally, if one were lucky, be permitted to see the brooding mass of the Grand Salève across the lake, the bitter wind from the Rhône valley churning the waves to a grey cream beneath the low blanket of cloud, the sensation of oppression which lay over the city during its never-ending months of winter, Geneva was no place for the experiment that was taking place there, the most daring, most idealistic, the grandest, most thrilling and sublime effort to introduce reason and equity into the affairs of nations. And gradually, so it had seemed to Matthew, the proceedings of the Assembly with its myriads of committees and sub-committees emitting a thick fog of quibbling resolutions and differing points of view, which thickly cloaked its good intentions just as mist clouded the Grand Salève, had come to resemble the Geneva weather. For month after month you could see nothing through the curtains of rain tumbling out of the sky but then abruptly, like a miracle the clouds would disappear, the sun would shine and Mont Blanc would appear white and glittering in the distance across the water. Yet how rare it was that the fog lifted from the Assembly’s proceedings! On those rare days, the opening of the great Disarmament Conference in 1932 had been one of them, Matthew had believed himself to be present at one of the great turning-points in the history of mankind. He had been wrong as it had turned out and now he was sadder and certainly older, if not much wiser.
‘Did someone mention Geneva?’ asked Brooke-Popham who, at first busy with a large helping of fish, had now got the better of it and was free to enter the conversation. ‘Met a young chap only the other day who’d been a couple of years there. Said it was a deuced awful hole. What was his name now? M’memory isn’t what it was. American. Capital fellow. Very obliging. Let’s see now. Colonel … no, Captain Erinmore. No. D’you know the chap I mean, Walter? Said he knew you and your charming daughter here. Herringport. No…Now let me see …’
‘I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure, Sir Robert,’ said Walter somewhat stiffly, exchanging a quick glance with Joan. The whole table, including Matthew, gazed at Brooke-Popham as if hypnotized.
‘I know …’ said Brooke-Popham. A tremor ran through his audience and Joan turned a little pale as she waited for the Commander-in-Chief to speak. There was silence, however, until it became clear that Brooke-Popham, worn out by his long day, had momentarily dozed off. However, his staff officer, the General whose name Matthew had failed to catch, now smoothly took control of the conversation in the place of his slumbering superior and launched into a lengthy reminiscence, not of Geneva but of Lake Maggiore where he had been on holiday in 1925 with his wife, who was a god-daughter of Chamberlain’s wife. And this, by the most fortunate coincidence, for he had never been to Lake Maggiore before or since, had happened to be the historic October of Locarno! What an extraordinary scene he had witnessed! The peasants, their clothes white with dust, tramping in from the surrounding hills with vast hood-shaped baskets of grapes on their backs. And Chamberlain himself, a bizarre figure among these sons of toil. Ah, the General could see him still as if it were yesterday, his monocle glinting in the autumn sunshine as he lolled among the scarlet cushions of his red Rolls-Royce whose long silver horns like trumpets occasionally cleared their metal throats to scatter the rustics from its path: this machine, once the property of a maharajah, had been hired locally, it seemed.
‘But…’ began Matthew, becoming indignant despite his good intentions.
The General, however, had not yet reached the high point of his reminiscence, which amounted to nothing less than an invitation from the Chamberlains to join them for the excursion in celebration of Mrs Chamberlain’s birthday so charmingly thought up by Briand and his friend, Loucheur: they had hired an Italian lake steamer, the Fleur d’Oranger for the occasion. On that delightful, extraordinary trip on the lake the General and his wife had mingled with all the chief delegates to the Conference, with Skrzynski and Benes, with the bearded, bespectacled, floppy-hatted Belgian, Vandervelde, with the shaven-headed, thick-necked German, Stresemann, his duelling-scarred cheeks set on fire by the sun and champagne … what a day to remember! In his mind’s eye he could still see Loucheur with his round pop-eyed face and the curling black moustaches of a Victorian waiter, chuckling as the champagne flowed. And then, to cap it all, Mussolini, ostentatious as ever, had made a dramatic dash by racing car from Milan to Stresa and from there by speedboat to Locarno!
And then, the General’s voice became solemn at the recollection, on the following day a great crowd of peasants had gathered in front of the town hall as the autumn twilight thickened. The word spread quickly through the crowd. The Treaty had been signed! Like a holy relic the document was carried to the window and shown to the crowd. A great cry had gone up. The church bells had been rung and women had wept and prayed. The Treaty had been signed!
‘But just look at the result!’ cried Matthew, his kindly face transfigured with emotion.
‘Eh?’ said the General, taken aback.
‘Just look at the result! “By our signatures we affirm that we want peace,” Briand declared and yet within fifteen years France and Germany were at war again and the rest of Europe with them. And the reason was this: Locarno was the old way of doing things! Behind-the-scenes diplomacy between the Big Powers. Whitehall and the Quai d’Orsay and the Wilhelmstrasse up to their old tricks again …’
‘I know, his name was Herringdorf,’ exclaimed Brooke-Popham waking up suddenly, but nobody paid any attention to him and presently he dozed off again.
‘And so it goes on. So it has always gone on. If the League failed to prevent this war it was because Britain, France, Italy and Germany, while paying lip-service to the idea of an international assembly to settle differences between nations, were never prepared to submit to its authority. Nor give it the power it needed. Who could take the League seriously when the real business was not being transacted in Geneva at all but aboard a pleasure steamer on Lake Maggiore! The Big Powers have brought this horrible destruction down on their own heads because their half-baked foreign ministries staffed by upperclass dimwits, who have more in common with each other than with the people of their respective countries, preferred to make cynical treaties rather than give real meaning to their membership of the League.’
‘Steady the Buffs!’ said Walter, not in the least concerned by Matthew’s unfortunate harangue.
Matthew’s face had grown flushed as he spoke. In his excitement he had wound a napkin round his clenched fist and delivered a terrible uppercut to the under surface of the table with the result that a miniature earthquake accompanied his final words, causing the glasses to dance on the table. Mrs Blackett, painfully surprised by this outburst for which she could see no sane explanation, glanced significantly at her husband to warn him against pursuing the argument. But Walter, calmly reaching out a hand to steady the tinkling cutlery beside his plate, said with a smile: ‘Strong nations, Matthew, will always take advantage of the weak if they can do so with impunity. This is a law of nature. After all, as you must agree, the disapproval of the League did nothing to inhibit Japan from taking over Manchuria …’
‘Well, exactly!’ shouted Matthew. ‘Because the League was given no support. Because Sir John Simon and the Foreign Office preferred to turn a blind eye to the crying injustice done to China and give tacit support to Japan!’
‘Even without Britain’s tacit support Japan would not have acted differently. Well, François, you’re the expert at this sort of thing, what d’you think?’
‘It is, I’m afraid, very simple. Powerful nations will have their way with the weak. They will see that their own interests are served. No doubt life would be better if both nations and people were guided by principle rather than by self-interest but … it is not the case. It is foolish to pretend otherwise.’
‘Self-interest? But surely a government has a duty to act in the moral as well as the material interests of its people!’ This last assertion, however, was received only with sympathetic smiles. The matter had already been settled to the general satisfaction.
Matthew was still in a state of dangerous excitement and these cynical views might well have caused him to deal the delicate rosewood dining-table another and perhaps even terminal blow but with an effort he managed to control himself. He was aware that in any case he had already made quite an exhibition of himself. Besides, he had heard this sort of thing so often before. He unwound the napkin from his fist and nudged his spectacles further up his nose, peering sadly round the table at his companions. Kate, who was bored, was over-heard asking her mother in a whisper what would be for pudding. Everyone chuckled and relaxed at this, even Matthew, though he was still distressed. He became aware that Joan was gazing at him from across the table and he could not help thinking how beautiful she was, the way the light caused her hair to glow and modelled with shadow the delicate contours of her cheekbones. He found it strange and disconcerting how this good-looking but impassive and perhaps even rather dull girl would suddenly brighten up and radiate a strong sexual attraction all around her, just as fireflies, mating at dusk in a warm climate, light up at intervals to signal their presence to a potential mate. No wonder, then, that according to Kate her elder sister was always breaking the hearts of the young men of the Colony: she evidently could not help it, any more than a firefly can stop itself lighting up at intervals.
‘Your nose will meet your chin!’ muttered the Doctor to Brooke-Popham at his side.
‘What!’ demanded Brooke-Popham waking up abruptly and staring at the Doctor in astonishment.
‘Your father and I often used to discuss these matters,’ said Walter who could not resist putting a few finishing touches to their argument, ‘and I think we both felt that misplaced idealism had sapped the nation’s strength badly in the last twenty years. The pacifism which has been vaunted since the end of the Great War by our friends of the socialist persuasion has resulted in the decline of British prestige and, even more serious, of her forces, too. Our enemies have been encouraged to try their luck.’ Noticing that the Commander-in-Chief was awake again Walter added: ‘What d’you think, Sir Robert? Am I talking through my hat?’
‘Most certainly not, Walter,’ said Brooke-Popham, using his napkin to dry his moustache where a few drops of vinegar still glimmered. ‘You need only take the example of the year 1932. Is it a coincidence that the same year should see a mutiny of the British fleet and an aggression by the Japanese against the International Settlement in Shanghai? Most certainly not. One clearly suggested the other. Moreover, our socialist brethren were not without influence even at the War Office. Naval parities with Japan and the foolish doctrine of “No war for ten years” were the sad result of listening to their siren call.’ The Commander-in-Chief beamed around the table to show that his views should not be taken amiss, even by those whom they happened to contradict. Nor did his friendly gaze omit the joint of roast beef which had just been brought in and set down for carving in front of Walter.
‘All in all,’ went on Brooke-Popham, ‘it’s perhaps just as well that the Japanese don’t have a fighter to match our Brewster Buffalo, otherwise they might be tempted to try something on in this part of the world.’ He hesitated. ‘Not, of course, that we can afford to be over-confident,’ he added, and his brow clouded somewhat; reports had been coming in of increased shipping at Camranh Bay for the past few days and even of landing-craft being loaded at Saigon. Well, he had not been nick-named ‘Fighting Popham’ for nothing. He sighed, thinking how difficult modern warfare was. Not like the old days! He was tired: ready to return to his quarters at the Sea View. Perhaps he would take a stroll on the hotel’s lawn by the sandy beach (bristling, though, nowadays with barbed wire and machine-gun nests), just to settle his mind before retiring. He wanted no landing-craft forging into his dreams and bursting there like ripe pods.
17
Now for some reason an air of melancholy settled over the table like a gentle fall of snow on an avenue of statues in the park, collecting in white drifts on heads and shoulders and blurring individual features. Matthew was contemplating Geneva again as he served himself with two delightfully lacquered roast potatoes, musing not without bitterness on the years he had spent travelling as the envoy of the Committee for International Understanding. For the truth was that those who governed the destiny of nations had remained as remote when he appeared in person as they had when he had written letters. Years, he remembered, had been spent roaming the corridors of palatial hotels (all the doings of the Committee had been attended by the most drastic luxury, as if the merest suggestion of economy would have blighted its high ideals) waiting to be summoned by some minor official of this or that Chancellery. On the rare occasions when he had found himself face to face with the statesman himself, it had always turned out to be because the statesman was in exile or disgrace, or because the Committee had been thought to be more important than it really was, or on account of some other such misunderstanding. In Japan, where he had gone in 1937 to recommend caution with respect to the ‘China Incident’ he had had an interview with a senior officer of the Japanese Army. This man had listened politely to what he had to say but had, himself, refrained from comment. Matthew had asked him whether he thought a war between Japan and America was probable. The officer had replied that he shared the view of the Emperor on that question. And what, Matthew had wanted to know, was the Emperor’s view? Unfortunately, the officer had replied without blinking, the Emperor’s view was something about which he was completely in the dark.
From about that time, perhaps, had dated Matthew’s growing feeling of hopelessness concerning the Committee’s task. After this visit to Japan he had taken to reading a good deal on his travels and though he still performed his duties conscientiously, of course, his spirit was no longer quite as deeply engaged as it had once been. It had become his habit to take books with him when visiting government offices: unimportant visitors were sometimes left to cool their heels in desolate ante-rooms for long periods. On more than one occasion he had become so engrossed in his reading that when finally informed that the dignitary in question would now receive him he had looked up in surprise, unable to think for a moment what the fellow might want of him.
Opposite Matthew, Brooke-Popham sat with his shoulders up to his ears, frozen in an attitude of weariness; he was remembering the old days. What fun it had been when they had first gone over to France in 1914! Not like today when every initiative was frustrated by some administrative detail. In those days the Flying Corps had only had to take care of reconnaissance: they had moved about the country like a travelling circus looking for a suitable field which they could use as an aerodrome wherever it was needed. In the course of the retreat from Mons it had been even more like a circus: he would set off in the morning in the Daimler in search of a suitable field and then the aeroplanes would follow and land on it later in the day, while the ground staff trailed across country after them with the fuel and the field work shops loaded into the most extraordinary collection of vans, solid-tyred lorries and pantechnicons, borrowed in London from different businesses … the van they had borrowed from Maples, the furniture people, had kept breaking down for some reason … As for the Daimler and the other motor-cars, they had been lent by various officers and civilians. One day, he remembered, he and Maurice Baring had set off in the Daimler on a misty autumn morning and about lunchtime had found a field on some table-land above a village called Sailly: and they had set to work then and there to carry stooks of corn to the side of the field so that the machines could land; and then on the way to Senlis he had bought a brass bell with a beautiful chime for the Mess. It had grown dark before they reached Senlis and a great yellow harvest moon had risen over the misty fields and the poplars. Baring had said it reminded him of a Corot. What a fine autumn that had been in 1914! A clear golden light lay over the reaped fields and the farms and the gardens full of fruit. He had only to close his eyes to see a little group of pilots at Saponay, lying in the straw and chatting after a reconnaissance sortie, or to see the heat-distorted air rising above the stubble at midday.
‘A penny for your thoughts, sir,’ said the General, hearing him utter a sigh.
‘Oh, water under the bridge, Jack,’ replied Brooke-Popham, clearing his throat dejectedly.
Matthew, accustomed to rationing, had found the roast beef extremely appetizing and was even wondering whether it was likely that he would be offered some more. At his side, however, Dupigny was eyeing his plate dubiously, prodding the meat here and there with his fork.
‘It’s roast beef,’ said Mrs Blackett firmly.
‘Nevertheless,’ Dupigny said to Matthew in an undertone, ‘it is sometimes possible to eat well here. Today, no, we are out of luck. But sometimes, when Walter invites his fellow merchants of Singapore the cook makes un petit effort. Then, ah! you would think you are in Italy of the Renaissance seated at a table surrounded by merchant-princes. You see, here in Singapore there are many people of this kind. The names of their commercial empires have the ring of glorious city-states, don’t you think so? Sime Darby! Harrisons and Crosfield! Maclaine Watson and Company! Langfield and Bowser! Guthrie and Company! And the greatest of them all, brooding over the Far East like the house of Medici over Tuscany: Jardine Matheson! Nor should we forget Blackett and Webb for there, in his usual place at the end of the table, a merchant-prince in his own right, Walter Blackett presides over this reunion of wealth and power as if he were Pope Leo X in person! That is a sight worth seeing!’
Dupigny’s flight of fancy was interrupted by a sudden crash outside the door. Walter half rose to his feet but before he could make a move the door opened and a man lurched into the room backwards, as if he had just eluded the grasp of someone he had been struggling with in the corridor outside. For a moment he seemed to be expecting a further onslaught from his invisible assailant, but none came so he straightened himself and smoothed down his hair; the door was closed quietly from outside by an unseen hand. ‘Sorry I’m late, Walter,’ he said in rather slurred tones. ‘Where am I sitting?’
‘Quelle horreur!’ whispered Dupigny, his eyes glinting with malicious pleasure. ‘C’est Charlie, le frère de Madame Blackett. Et ivre mort, en plus!’
Charlie was wearing merely a cream flannel shirt, open at the neck, and grey flannel trousers. On his feet he wore tennis shoes with the laces undone. His dishevelled appearance and the fact that he was panting slightly suggested that he had just come from some energetic sporting event. Matthew could see no family resemblance to Mrs Blackett in Charlie and he was clearly some twenty years younger. Like her, though, his face framed by blond curls bore the traces of youthful good looks. He was badly in need of a hair-cut.
Monty swiftly rounded the table and took him by the arm, steering him towards the empty place beside Joan. Charlie surveyed the table with watery blue eyes as he went, muttering half to himself: ‘I’m glad to see you haven’t polished off all the grub.’
‘We’ve just been hearing, Charlie,’ declared Mrs Blackett, ‘that Matthew has recently come from Geneva where he has been working for the League of Nations.’
‘Has he, indeed?’ mumbled Charlie over the roast beef which had been hastily placed before him. ‘And I’m sure a fat lot of good …’ The rest of the sentence was muffled by his first bite of roast beef.
‘Well, not recently,’ said Matthew with a smile, and explained that the Committee for International Understanding, with Europe crumbling about it, had closed down in 1940, naturally dismayed by the amount of misunderstanding the outbreak of war entailed. ‘As a matter of fact, for the past year I’ve been working on a farm. Because of my poor eyesight they didn’t want me in the Army.’
‘Le “Digging for Victory”, alors?’ suggested Dupigny. ‘It is evident that the supply of food is no less important than the supply of munitions,’ he added reassuringly.
Meanwhile Walter, swallowing the irritation caused him by the unorthodox arrival of his brother-in-law, had engaged Brooke-Popham in conversation, for the Commander-in-Chief had shaken off his melancholy and, though comatose, was still awake. For someone like himself, Walter was explaining, whose job it was to run a merchant business, a war with Japan was not a vague possibility for the future, it had already been in progress for some time. In this war, which was being fought invisibly and in silence by means of quotas, price-cutting and a stealthy invasion of traditional markets, Blackett and Webb had found itself not only in the front line but fighting for its life. Since the end of the Great War there had been a steady encirclement of British commerce in the Far East. By 1934 Japanese assaults on British textile markets had caused Westminister to introduce import quotas on cotton and rayon goods destined for Malaya. No wonder Walter and other Singapore merchants had protested to the Colonial Office that their mercantile interests were being sacrificed for no better reason than the inability of Lancashire to survive intensive competition from Japan. Walter paused and the faint grinding of his teeth became audible in the silence. He had reminded himself of the fact that Solomon Langfield, a big importer of Lancashire cotton, had been in favour of the quotas. That unprincipled blackguard! The bristles on his spine stirred beneath his Lancashire cotton shirt.
Walter surveyed his family and guests sullenly, as if somehow they had been responsible for this lamentable state of affairs. They gazed back, as if hypnotized. Only Monty, who had doubtless heard all this before, twiddled his fork and smothered a yawn.
‘What I would like to know is this: can one really blame the Japanese?’ enquired Walter. His guests exchanged puzzled glances, as if to say: ‘Of course one can blame the Japanese. Why ever not?’
‘After all, they too are fighting for their lives. They depended so heavily for their survival on silk and cotton that, naturally, they would do whatever they had to in order to sell them. In 1933 the average Japanese price for textiles was ten cents a yard while Lancashire’s was eighteen or nineteen cents, almost twice the price! Mind you, the Japs got up to every trick in the book to evade the quotas. For example, since cotton piece-goods were not included in the quotas in no time pillow-cases big enough to put a house in began to arrive here in Singapore … pyjamas to fit elephants … shirts that twenty people could have got into … and all designed to be swiftly unstitched and used by our local manufacturers instead of the Lancashire cotton they were supposed to be using. Frankly, I admire their ingenuity. Can you blame them?’
‘Business is all very well, Mr Blackett,’ said the General rather brusquely. ‘But you surely do not mean to condone the way they grabbed Manchuria and invaded China. Your own firm’s business must have suffered as a result of the way the Japs have been closing the Open Door.’
Walter nodded and smiled. ‘That’s true. We have suffered. But look at it from the Japanese point of view. Can you blame them for extending their influence into Manchuria and China? After all, the demands they have been making since 1915 … for the lease of Port Arthur and Dairen, for the South Manchuria and Antung-Mukden Railways and for the employment of Japanese capital in Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia, what do they remind you of?’ Walter, smiling now, gazed at his baffled guests. ‘I can tell you what they remind me of! They are an excellent imitation of the sort of economic imperialism through demands for special privileges which Britain herself has been making in Asia since … well, since this young man’s father started our business in the 1880s.’
‘But was that a reason for Japan to invade China?’ the General wanted to know.
Walter shook his head. ‘As a businessman I understand very well why the Japanese had to invade China in 1937. China, from the point of view of trade and investment, was chaotic. No reasonably hard-boiled businessman looking at Nationalist China would have seen much to give him confidence. The Kuomintang wanted to put an end to foreigners’ privileges. They wanted to see the foreign concession areas at Shanghai, Tientsin and so on handed back to China. They wanted to stop foreigners having their own courts and raising their own taxes in China. No, business must go on, whatever the price. And a businessman needs security. So can one blame the Japanese?’
‘Security for business doesn’t give people the right to invade and kill their neighbours!’ protested Matthew.
‘My dear chap, I couldn’t agree with you more. But there comes a point where the justice of the matter becomes irrelevant. You must look at the situation from the Japanese point of view. For them it was a matter of life and death because while the Kuomintang was putting their investment in China at risk they were faced at home by the disastrous effects of the slump. In 1929, forty per cent of Japan’s total export trade was in raw silk. It only needed the collapse of American prosperity and a consequent plunge in the demand for silk to bring the Japanese economy to catastrophe. Raw silk exports were halved almost overnight. Sales of cotton and manufactured goods joined the slide! What were they expected to do? Sit at home and starve? Let’s not be naïve, my boy. Justice is always bound to come a poor second to necessity. Strong nations survive. Weak nations go to the wall, that has always been the way of the world and always will be! The point is, can one blame them for taking matters into their own hands? From the business point of view they were in a pickle. And now, mind you, with their assets frozen and their difficulties in getting raw materials their pickle is going from bad to worse. I believe the Americans should give them the raw materials they need. Otherwise what can they do but grab them by force?’ Noticing that the Commander-in-Chief was looking taken aback by this suggestion, Walter added tactfully: ‘Not that they’d get very far in this part of the world.’
‘The reason the Japs are so touchy and arrogant is that they eat too much fish,’ said Brooke-Popham. ‘It’s scientific. The iodine in their diet plays hell with their thyroids. They can’t help themselves. So, no, I suppose one can’t blame them.’
18
Now the last course had been placed on the table: a thoroughly satisfactory baked bread-pudding. Matthew, for his part, eyed it with concern, afraid that it might prove too unusual for the taste of Dupigny. He need not have worried, however, for Dupigny surprisingly proved to have a craving for it, ate two helpings liberally coated with bright yellow custard and even went so far as to ask for the ingredients. Mrs Blackett, mollified by his enthusiasm, gave them: stale bread, raisins, sugar, an egg, a little milk and a pinch of nutmeg.
‘Incredible,’ murmured Dupigny, eyebrows raised politely.
Brooke-Popham’s thoughts had wandered back to August 1914 again, recalled to France by Dupigny’s presence. He chuckled inwardly at the thought of how primitive all their arrangements had been that first summer. He had carried a small, brand-new portmanteau full of gold everywhere he went, paying for everything out of it, from new flying-machines to spares, to chickens and wine for the HQ Mess. The hours he had spent guarding that portmanteau! Once he and Baring had driven into Paris in the Daimler and gone to Blériot’s factory there to buy a new flying-machine. Then, later, they had bought new tyres and headlights for the Daimler. He had paid for them in gold to the astonishment of the chap in the shop. ‘The English are amazing!’ he had said in French to Baring, who spoke the lingo. Yes, those were the days! Brooke-Popham folded his napkin, stifling a yawn, beckoned home now by the nodding palms of Katong and the Sea View Hotel. ‘Life is good,’ he reflected.
The great dish of pudding had been removed. The meal was over. A large white pill and a glass of water had been set in front of Charlie, who had been eating doggedly with his mouth very near his plate and making no effort to join in the conversation. Since he had finished eating, however, he had been practising backhands with an invisible tennis racket over the tablecloth. In the process his wrist caught and knocked over a glass of water. There was a moment of startled silence.
‘I leave you to deal with him,’ Walter said to his wife with unexpected anger, rising from his chair.
‘Oh, really, Uncle Charlie, what have you done now?’ Kate said, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder. ‘And you haven’t taken your pill.’ The guests filed out in silence, leaving Charlie staring sulkily at the saturated table-cloth.
Matthew would have liked to retire to bed at this point: he had had a long and tiring day. But it seemed that the Blacketts had not yet finished with him for Monty suggested a quick stroll in the garden. Together they stepped out into the warm, perfumed night accompanied by a dull-eyed Joan, yawning again behind scarlet fingernails. Birds uttered low cries, insects clicked and whirred around them and once a great patch of black velvet swooped, slipped and folded against the starry sky. Some sort of fruit bat, said Joan.
Although flanked by the young Blacketts, Matthew found himself peering uneasily into the vibrating darkness: he was not yet accustomed to the tropical night. As they sauntered through the potentially hungry shadows in the direction of the Orchid Garden he tried to recall whether he had once read something about ‘flying snakes’ or whether it was simply his imagination. And did fruit bats only eat fruit or did they sometimes enjoy a meal of flesh and blood? He was so absorbed in this speculation that when, presently, he felt something slip into his hand he jumped, thinking it might be a ‘flying snake’. But it was only Joan’s soft fingers. To cover his embarrassment he asked her about fruit bats. Oh, they were perfectly harmless, she replied, despite their frightening, Dracula-like wings.
But, Monty was saying with a laugh, what did Matthew think about another weird creature, namely their Uncle Charlie? Did Matthew know that he had been a cricket Blue at Cambridge? For he had been, though one might not think so to look at him now.
‘Does he work for Blackett and Webb?’
Monty and Joan hooted with laughter at this idea. ‘Father wouldn’t let him within a mile of the place. No, he’s in the Indian Army, the Punjabis. That was OK while they were stuck on the Khyber Pass or wherever they normally spend their time. But then, disaster! Charlie’s regiment gets posted to Malaya. Father can’t abide him, as you may have gathered. He has to put up with him, though, because of Mother who insists on inviting him to stay whenever he has any leave. She’s afraid he will go off the rails if she doesn’t watch over him. She may be right at that. Once he spent a week in Penang and we kept getting telephone calls asking us if we were prepared to vouch for a Captain Charles Tyrrell who was running up bills right left and centre. Then he started tampering with someone else’s wife and there was the most frightful palaver over that. Father had to go up and straighten it all out. You can imagine how delighted he was. Because, of course, we’re well known in this country and gossip spreads like wildfire.’
‘Oh, and he’s a poet, too,’ said Joan, giving Matthew’s perspiring hand a little squeeze.
‘That’s right. He wrote a poem about a place in Spain …’
‘Guernica.’
‘Yes, that’s it, about the place Joan just said. Mother had to warn us all not to laugh because he took it so seriously. He’s quite a card.’
Matthew had only been able to give part of his attention to what he was being told about Charlie because of the sensations that were spreading up through his body from the hand which Joan was holding. Not content with the damp, inert clasp of two palms, Joan’s fingers had become active, alternately squeezing his own and trying to burrow into the hollow of his palm. He could not help thinking: ‘If Monty weren’t here …’ and his heart pounded at the thought of what he and Joan might get up to. But Monty was there; and he showed no sign of noticing the delicious hand-squeezings that were going on in the darkness. Presently he said: ‘We’d better be going inside. They’ll be leaving soon.’ With a final squeeze Joan’s hand abandoned Matthew’s as they passed back into the light.
They found the elder Blacketts and their guests drinking coffee and brandy in the drawing-room. Relations between Walter and the unfortunate Charlie had evidently been somewhat restored while they had been in the garden for, as they entered, they heard the tail-end of an argument that had been taking place.
‘You expect young men being paid next to nothing to die defending your property and your commercial interests!’ Charlie was asserting vociferously. He was still a little drunk but had tied his shoe-laces in the interim and his appearance was less dishevelled.
‘I don’t know about dying,’ replied Walter good-humouredly. ‘All you’ve done so far is drink.’ And that proved to be the end of the discussion and of the evening, for the Air-Marshal and the General announced that it was time that they were on their way. They politely insisted on shaking hands with everybody on their way out, even with little Kate who, overcome by the momentous occasion, got mixed up and said: ‘Thank you for having me.’ This caused smiles all round and poor Kate wished she were dead. How could she be so childish! She blushed furiously and tried to smile, too, though she really felt like bursting into tears.
‘You must come to our place one of these days,’ muttered Dr Brownley to a semi-circle of glassy-eyed Blacketts who seemed to have gathered for no other purpose than to stare after him in mute accusation as he escaped into the darkness.
Dupigny suggested to Matthew that they walk back to the Mayfair by way of the road rather than the garden, to see if the Major had retired to his little bungalow on the opposite side of the road. Matthew said goodnight to the elder Blacketts. On the way out he found Monty and Joan on the steps by the front door. Monty held out his hand, saying that he was off to bed and would wish Matthew good night.
‘Monty, I’d like to thank you for your help in getting me out here.’
‘Think nothing of it, old boy. After all, we couldn’t leave you to be raped by all those strapping Land Girls, could we?’ And with a wave Monty disappeared inside.
After a moment Joan came forward. He thought she was going to say good night, too, but no. ‘Hello you!’ she said, lighting up like a firefly in the darkness. He peered at her uncertainly. ‘You always look so serious,’ she added, putting her shoulder against his and shoving him a little off balance.
‘Do I?’ he asked cautiously.
‘Come on, I’ll walk down the road a bit with you and François.’
They set off together down the drive but almost immediately Joan was called back by her mother who was standing at the front door. She wanted to know where Joan was going.
‘Oh Mother!’ Joan said irritably.
‘Why can’t you leave the girl alone?’ Walter wanted to know, equally exasperated. A hurried conference took place.
While they were waiting for her Dupigny asked: ‘D’you like women?’
‘Well, yes, of course.’ To Matthew this seemed a rather peculiar question. After a moment he added: ‘I’m rather keen on D. H. Lawrence, as a matter of fact.’
There was a pause while Dupigny turned this over in his mind. Presently he said: ‘Out here, you know, there are many young men but few young women … I mean, European. There are, bien entendu, the Asiatical women, ah yes, but in Singapore, you see, although the young men make terribly love in a physical way to the oriental ladies and sometimes even to the mature European ladies (those who have, as we say, la cuisse hospitalière), still, alas, they are not satisfied. They sigh for companions of their own age and race. They are encouraged, moreover, by their elders who wish to preserve the purity of the race, a desire of which Hitler himself would not disapprove. With us in Indo-China it is different. We do not worry like the British when one of us decides to marry the daughter of a prosperous native. Such marriages have very often a great utility, both commercial and political.’
‘Well, I must say …’ began Matthew, but his tired brain declined to furnish him with any suitable observation.
‘You like Joan, perhaps? Yes, she is a nice English girl, healthy, full of virtues, plainly but solidly built in the English manner, made (comme le bread-pudding de Madame sa mère) entirely of good things, but, alas, without either the ravishing innocence of a child or the serious attractions of a mature woman. Personally I believe the only one of the Blackett ladies to my taste is la petite … Miss Kate, and even she is becoming a trifle trop mûre … She is already in my opinion a bit too … how d’you say … bien balancée … bien foutue … Yes a bit too well-endowed, thank you.’
‘But she’s only a child!’
‘I agree she has that in her favour. All the same, the rot begins. I speak physically, of course.’ Dupigny suppressed a yawn.
‘Of course,’ agreed Matthew hastily, feeling the tide of the conversation carrying him swiftly out of his depth. ‘But what I meant was …’
‘Ah, Joan is returning at last.’
The night air seemed very humid: the breeze had dropped, increasing the impression of heat. An hour ago there had been a brief, heavy downpour and water still gurgled busily in the deep storm-drain beside the road, but overhead the sky was clear. Matthew and Dupigny sauntered along hands in pockets; Joan walked between them, humming a song beneath her breath. As the road curved towards the Mayfair, however, she dragged the two men to a stop and disengaged herself. She had promised her mother she would not stay out long. Matthew shook hands with her stiffly: he thought it best not to attempt a more intimate embrace for the moment. As for Dupigny, he collected her slender fingers in his own and conveyed them to his lips but, despite the darkness, Matthew could see that he was using them to mask the remains of the yawn against which he had been struggling while speculating on the sensual qualities of the Blackett women.
‘How romantic you are, François! Why can’t Englishmen be like you? Well, good night!’
Matthew and Dupigny walked on towards the Major’s bungalow which seemed, as far as Matthew could tell in the darkness, to be no less ramshackle than the Mayfair Building on the other side of the road. They called at the verandah but there was no reply, except the soft cry of a night-bird from somewhere in the undergrowth. Matthew produced his packet of Craven A and they each lit a cigarette, lingering in the road while they smoked: indoors the heat would be suffocating.
‘D’you happen to know what the Singapore Grip is?’ Matthew asked. ‘Some people I met said I should watch out for it.’
‘I believe it is what they call here a certain tropical fever, very grave. Certainly, you must watch out for it.’
‘Oh?’ But why, wondered Matthew, would the RAF men have found it so amusing if it was a serious illness? This was a mystery.
Matthew would have pursued the matter but Dupigny was asking him how well he knew his old friend Major Archer. ‘What? You have been introduced only? You must make his acquaintance better …’ And he went on to explain how fond he was of the Major. The Major, indeed, was one of the few people on earth for whom he, Dupigny, had any affection at all. They had first met in France during the Great War. In those days he had been a liaison officer with a British regiment. He and the Major had hardly known each other then. After the war he himself had gone to Indo-China, the Major had gone to Ireland. But then, one day in 1925, on a visit to London to see his tailor during his European leave, they had bumped into each other at a restaurant in the Strand, chez Simpson, perhaps? With enormous difficulty they had succeeded in recognizing each other, they had exchanged cards, they had renewed their acquaintanceship. Then, in the course of his next visit to Europe in 1930, they had met yet again, this time on purpose, and in 1935 yet again.
Dupigny had watched his English friend with the utmost curiosity. It had taken the Major time to settle down after the war. For a while he had been in hospital. And then he had evidently witnessed some unpleasantness in Ireland which had affected his peace of mind. The terrible unemployment of the post-war years had further unsettled him. In those days, too, he had perhaps still been yearning to capture a suitable young lady as a bride. There had no doubt been some woman in Ireland … but that Dupigny suspected only. For the Major himself never spoke of such matters.
Over the years Dupigny had noticed the Major becoming more private in his habits and, in some ways, undoubtedly a bit eccentric. If you had gone to take coffee with the Major in, let us say, 1930, you would have witnessed a strange ritual. The housekeeper would first appear with a silver jug containing just-boiled water. The Major, still chatting to you politely, would whip a thermometer from his breast pocket, plunge it into the water, remove it, read it, dry it on a napkin and, with a nod to the housekeeper, replace it in his pocket. The coffee could now be made! Ah, that was the bachelor life for you! And there were other things, too. He had taken to grumbling if his wine glasses did not sparkle as clear as rain-water … yet at the same time thought nothing of piling his cigar ash on the polished surface of his mahogany dining-table, or of dropping it, without ceremony, on the carpet.
You might also, if the Major had ushered you into his drawing-room in Bayswater about the year 1930, have found it hard to discover a satisfactory seat, since all the more comfortable chairs and the sofa were occupied by slumbering dogs, refugees for the most part from Ireland’s fight for independence and by now growing old. If you did find a seat it would be covered in fine dog hairs: these animals were always moulting for some reason. The Major himself would merely perch on the arm of a chair while the dogs gazed at him with bleary devotion from their cushions. Sometimes, if a bark was heard in the street outside, they would give answering barks, though without moving an inch from their chairs. Dupigny had known few more strange experiences than that of sitting in the company of the silent, withdrawn Major towards the end of a winter afternoon and hearing those dogs erupting round him in the gloom.
‘Eh bien! So all is up with the Major!’ one might have thought in 1930, looking at him perched on the arm of a chair across his penumbrous, dog-strewn drawing-room. ‘Nothing surely can save him now from the increasingly private comforts and exacting rules of his bachelor life.’ One by one over the next five years while he, Dupigny, was again in Indo-China the dogs had dropped away and were not replaced. The Major, perhaps, was no longer very fond of dogs and had kept them mainly from a sense of duty, just as he had kept the drawing-room itself exactly as it used to be when his aunt was still alive. By this time, without a doubt, he had become a confirmed bachelor. The marriages of his contemporaries no longer filled him with such envy. He had begun to see that being married can have drawbacks, that being single can have advantages.
Not, of course, that the Major had not continued to fall in love at regular intervals. But now he tended to fall in love with happily married women, the wives of his friends and thus, for a man of honour like himself, unattainable creatures who personified all the virtues, above all, the virtue of not being in a position to return his feelings. The love he bore them was of the chivalrous, selfless kind so fashionable among the British in late-Victorian and Edwardian times, perhaps because (selon l’hypothèse Dupigny) it handily acknowledged the female principle in the universe without incommoding busy males with real women. Still, Dupigny had had to admit that his poor friend had a life which suited him very well, y compris les amours.
Agreed, the Major’s reward in these encounters was not the tumultuous one of illicit embraces between the sheets: it was the glance of gratitude on a pure maternal brow, the running of a moustache as soft as … blaireau, how d’you say? (badger? thank you) … the running of a badger-soft moustache over fair knuckles, the reading of unspoken thoughts in bright eyes. These small moments, remembered late at night as he sprawled in his lonely bed smoking his pipe in a bedroom that smelled like a railway carriage (Fumeurs), were the Major’s only but adequate reward.
If, however, perhaps hoping for a deeper relationship, the lady should pay him a visit one afternoon bringing her children (Dupigny had witnessed one such occasion) the Major would become cross. Young children would totter about the house knocking things over and trying to hug the elderly, malodorous dogs, themselves grown short-tempered with age. Older children would chase each other from room to room and would keep asking him if they could play with certain important possessions of his (a gramophone, a pair of Prussian binoculars, a steam-powered model boat or electric railway) without realizing that these objects could only be handled with elaborate ceremony and precautions. These children-accompanied sentimental visits, Dupigny surmised, had never failed to be disastrous, passion-damping.
On such occasions, no doubt, faced with a terrifying glimpse of what a real marriage might entail, the Major could not help congratulating himself on his escape. A white marble statue of Venus, it was true, still glimmered, seductively unclothed, at the foot of his stairs. But having turned forty the Major must have reflected that by now he was over the worst. He had come through the years of emotional typhoons battered, certainly, but all in one piece. It was wonderful how a human being could adapt to his circumstances. The Major knew in his heart that he could not have endured marriage, the untidiness and confusion of it.
And so, there the Major had been, about 1935, fixed in his habits, apparently suspended in his celibacy like a chicken in aspic. But one day, abruptly, he was no longer satisfied: he had decided to give it all up, this comfortable life, to travel and see the world before he was finally too old. A man has only one life! How surprised Dupigny had been when one day he learned that the Major was making a voyage to Australia, and then to Japan, even to visit him in Hanoi and later in Saigon! Why had he done this? Another love affair that had gone wrong? The Major never spoke of such things. Why had he then settled in Singapore, opportunely for himself as it now turned out? This was something which Dupigny had not understood. And neither, perhaps, had the Major!
Matthew and Dupigny, having finished their cigarettes, approached the entrance to the Mayfair Building: a little way into the compound a stiff, dignified old jaga in khaki shorts and a yellow turban watched them sleepily from his charpoy but all they could see of his face in the darkness was a copious white moustache and a white beard. Dupigny asked whether the Major was still in the bungalow. The jaga raised a skinny arm to point towards the building behind him.
‘It seems the Major has been here all the time. Let us go and wish him good night.’
After the starlit compound the darkness on the verandah seemed almost complete. It was agreeably perfumed, however, by the smoke of a Havana cigar whose glowing tip Matthew had no difficulty in locating as it danced for a moment in fingers raised in greeting.
‘Not yet in bed, Brendan? Old gentlemen must take care of themselves.’
‘I’ll be going to bed in a moment,’ the Major said, but Matthew had already been informed that the Major, harassed by insomnia, was just as likely to sit here on the verandah smoking cigars until first light. ‘Did you hear anything? Were there any military big-wigs there?’
‘Brooke-Popham and a General. They appear confident.’
Matthew and Dupigny groped their way across the verandah to the Major’s side. There Matthew collapsed with a shriek of bamboo on to a chaise-longue. How tired he was! What a lot had happened since he had last been in bed! ‘Very soon now I shall go to bed,’ he thought wearily. From where he sat he had a view of the Major’s silhouette. He could see the outline of his ‘badger-soft’ moustache, recently outraged by Cheong’s scissors. He could even see the corrugated wrinkles mounting the slope of the Major’s worried brow, growing smoother as they reached the imperceptible line of hair neatly plastered down with water.
‘What fools those men are!’ exclaimed the Major, and the tip of his cigar glowed fiercely in the darkness. But after a moment he added humbly: ‘Of course, they may know things that we don’t.’
19
At the end of the first week of December a little group of men wearing overalls or boiler-suits or simply shorts on account of the heat gathered one afternoon in the shade of the tamarind tree in the Mayfair’s compound. They belonged to the Mayfair Auxiliary Fire Service unit (AFS for short) and they had been summoned, although today was Sunday, to an urgent practice. The morning newspaper had carried news of a convoy of unidentified transport ships heading south from Japanese-occupied Indo-China and the Major, who was in charge of the Mayfair AFS unit, feared the worst. The Major, at the moment, was not under the tamarind tree but in the garage beside the house, struggling with a tarpaulin. Matthew, who had just been enrolled in the unit, was assisting him. There was no ventilation in the garage and the day’s sun, beating down on the corrugated iron roof, had made it like an oven inside. Matthew had already been suffering from the heat: now he felt the perspiration running down his legs and collecting in his socks.
The Major had dragged the tarpaulin off a large box-shaped object which proved to be some sort of engine, gleaming with steel and brass pipes and fittings. Matthew stared at it blankly. It had two large dials on a sort of dashboard and, instead of wheels, two carrying-poles like a palanquin.
‘It’s a Coventry Victor,’ declared the Major with pride. ‘Brand new!’
‘But what does it do?’
‘It’s a trailer-pump. The trailer is over there. I’ve had a bracket put on the back of my car so we can tow it about if need be. Give me a hand and we’ll carry it outside. We’re going to have a drill with it when our instructor gets here. He’s an ex-London Fire Brigade man and when he’s sober he knows his stuff … which isn’t always, unfortunately.’
Presently, the instructor arrived. He turned out to be a short, bald and red-faced man in his fifties called McMahon. After a lengthy altercation with the taxi-driver who had brought him he advanced swaying towards the Mayfair Building. The Major had explained to Matthew that Mr McMahon, like many firemen, had started life as a seaman. It became clear, however, as he collided with a bush, shouting, on his way round the house, that this was not the explanation of his rolling gait.
The Major had drawn up the members of the Mayfair AFS unit in a line beside the tennis court ready to be inspected by their instructor. They stood at ease, waiting uncertainly, while Mr McMahon weaved his way towards them, cursing. Apart from the Major himself, the unit consisted of Dupigny, a Mr Sen and a Mr Harris, both clerks who were occasionally lent to the Mayfair by Blackett and Webb (the former was Indian, the latter Eurasian), Mr Wu, a friendly Chinese businessman, the Chinese ‘boy’, Cheong, who had surprised the Major by volunteering and who, though his face remained perfectly impassive in every situation, had proved easily the most efficient of the recruits, Monty Blackett, who had volunteered (the lesser of two evils) to avoid conscription into the Local Defence Force but was still hoping to achieve, if not a complete dispensation, at least, a more agreeable position in Singapore’s active or passive defences, and finally, a handsome young man called Nigel Langfield, the son of Walter’s arch-rival and enemy, Solomon Langfield: Nigel was wearing a very new blue boiler-suit with AFS prettily embroidered in red on one of its breast pockets; from time to time he would lower his nose to sniff the satisfying newcloth smell of this garment.
These would-be firemen eyed their instructor with concern as he waded towards them, as if through a swamp. Before reaching them, however, he unexpectedly changed course to embrace the trunk of another tree not far away. Then, with his arms still round the tree and still cursing, he slithered to the ground, eventually struggling around to use it as a back-rest.
‘God help ye, y’ blithering lot o’ helpless bastards!’ he babbled, fighting for breath. ‘Let’s see another dry drill then, you perfumed bunch o’ pansies or, God help ye, the fists’ll be flyin’ or me name’s not McMahon! Get on with it … A dry drill, I’m tellin’ ye!’
‘I thought we were going to do a wet drill today,’ said the Major, looking dissatisfied. ‘That’s what you said last time.’
‘This time I’m sayin’ it’s a dry drill, y’bastard, so hop to it and see that ye run the bleedin’ hose out without a twist in it or ye’ll catch it hot, I’m tellin’ ye …’
‘Well, we might just do one,’ said the Major, ‘in order to get the feel of it before we do a wet drill. I’m afraid McMahon’s not going to be much help to us today by the look of it,’ he added in an undertone to the rest of the unit.
‘I heard that, y’ pissin’ old goat,’ yelled McMahon, quivering with a fresh paroxysm of rage and struggling ineffectually to get to his feet, evidently with the intention of exacting retribution.
‘Shut up or we’ll bash your silly brains in,’ said Monty languidly, sloping off in the direction of the bungalow.
‘Look here, Monty, where are you off to? We’re just going to begin,’ said the Major indignantly.
‘I’m just going to find an aspirin, old boy, if you don’t mind.’
‘Well, hurry up about it. I’ll try and explain the basic drill to Matthew in the meantime.’
There were, the Major explained, two types of hose: suction hose for picking up water from an open source such as a canal or a river, and delivery hose, for relaying water to the fire. Suction hose had a wide diameter and was reinforced to keep it cylindrical; it also had wire strainers to prevent stones or rubbish being sucked up into the pump. ‘Have you got that?’
‘I think so. This other one, then, is the delivery hosepipe, is it?’
From under his tree McMahon shrieked with laughter. ‘Hosepipe! He thinks he’s a bleedin’ gardener!’
‘Hm, I should have mentioned that, we say “hose” rather than “hosepipe”, and ropes are known as “lines” and the rungs of a ladder are called “rounds” … I don’t suppose it matters particularly, as we’re just a scratch team, but McMahon seems to prefer it.’
Delivery hose, the Major continued, was wound flat on a revolving drum and came in fifty or a hundred-foot lengths with a diameter of two or three inches; at the business end there was a tapering brass tube called the ‘branch’, not the nozzle! The drill was that the number one man ran off in the direction of the fire with the branch, unreeling a length of hose as he went; meanwhile the number three man laid out another length of hose and dealt with the couplings. These couplings were what were known as ‘male’ and ‘female’, that was to say …
‘That fat pansy wouldn’t know the difference if ye took up y’skirts and showed him!’
‘That will do, McMahon,’ said the Major sharply. He turned back to Matthew. ‘The idea is that the male coupling plugs into the female on the previous length of hose. The male plugs into the standpipe, if that’s where the water is coming from, or into the engine pump. Meanwhile the runner takes hold of the lugs on the “female” end around which the delivery hose is normally wrapped and he uses them as an axle round which the roll of hose unwinds. Here, Nigel will give us a demonstration.’
Nigel obediently took the roll of hose and holding it a little way from his body went loping gracefully away with it, laying it down neatly on the turf behind him as he went.
‘It’s not as easy as it looks. Nigel’s rather good at it.’
It was true. Everybody watched in admiration and even McMahon was temporarily silenced by this display of skill. There was still no sign of Monty so Cheong was sent to look for him. Meanwhile Mr Wu, who with Dupigny and Cheong had been tinkering with the engine, was called forward to show Matthew how to climb a ladder which had earlier been set up against the roof of the Mayfair.
‘When climbing radder glasp lounds not side of radder,’ explained Mr Wu to Matthew.
‘What?’
‘Glasp lungs!’
‘Good heavens! You mean, your own? Or someone else’s?’
‘That’s right,’ said the Major, approaching swiftly. ‘You should always hold the rungs, or the “rounds” as we call them, rather than the frame of the ladder. And incidentally never step on to a window-ledge: they tend to collapse. The drill is to put one leg right into the window. Ah, thank heaven for that, it looks as if McMahon has gone to sleep,’ he added. ‘Perhaps this would be a good time to get the pump working. After all, we may not have much more time to practise.’
A gloomy silence had fallen on the Mayfair AFS unit. Even McMahon, muttering in his sleep, looked discouraged. Staring into the distance where the white wedding-cake mass of the Blacketts’ house glimmered above the trees, the Major said: ‘Still, with luck we may never be needed.’
As soon as the afternoon’s drill was over Matthew with a sigh of relief made for the bathroom, which as he had already discovered, had one serious disadvantage: the absence of any running water. A vast green and yellow earthenware jar with a copper ladle stood in one corner. This was a Shanghai jar. The procedure was simple: you dipped the ladle into the jar and poured the water over yourself. Matthew stripped and began sluicing himself; he found the water in the jar tepid but refreshing, nevertheless.
‘An Irishwoman will be fired from a cannon, Monty? Whatever for?’
Monty, who had followed Matthew into the bathroom with an invitation, explained. It was some special show being put on at The Great World in order to raise money for the war against the Jabs in China. The Irishwoman was a human cannonball making a tour of the Far East. And there was also a group of singers called the Da Sousa Sisters. Anyway, Joan had said she was keen to go. That meant they only needed another woman and they could make an evening of it. ‘You don’t happen to know any women, do you?’
‘Monty, I’ve only just arrived.’
‘Never mind then. I expect I’ll be able to scrape one up somewhere. I’ll see you over at our place in a couple of hours, OK?’
‘Oh look, while you’re here, Monty, I’d like you to explain something about our Johore estate that I don’t understand. Why are we replanting at a time when it’s so urgent to produce rubber? I don’t get it.’ The previous day Matthew and the Major had driven over the Causeway and into Johore on the mainland so that Matthew could inspect the Mayfair estate. They had discovered that in a number of places mature trees were being replaced with saplings. When they had questioned Turner, the estate manager whom Matthew had glimpsed on his first evening in Singapore, he had not known the reason for it. He had simply been instructed to replant by Blackett and Webb who, as managing agents, were in control of planting policy.
‘Well,’ replied Monty, sighing heavily, ‘it’s nothing to worry about. It’s all under control.’
‘I’m sure it’s under control. I just want to get the hang of things, that’s all.’
‘Rubber trees don’t last for ever, you know. And as they get older they get brittle. They break in the wind …’
‘But they last for thirty years or so, don’t they? And the trees that are being replaced aren’t that old. Besides, it’s not just an odd tree here and there. It’s being done in sections.’ There was no sound in the bathroom except for a steady splash of water and Monty’s rather laboured breathing. Matthew began to ladle water over himself again.
‘Look here,’ said Monty finally in a rallying tone, ‘I have to admit that your question has stumped me. We have so many estates that it’s hard to know everything about each one. The Mayfair is small beer compared with some of the others. But I tell you what. I’ll get the facts straight before your next Board meeting and we’ll thrash it out there, OK? Now don’t worry about a thing. I’ll be on my way now …’ However, he continued to stand in the doorway watching the water coursing over Matthew’s plump body. Did Matthew know, he enquired with a leer, that in the East there were many stories of beautiful girls who, in order to be cool, climbed into Shanghai jars and then could not get out, so they had to call a manservant to break the jar? Matthew could probably imagine what happened next! With that Monty departed, licking his lips, to bathe in the greater comfort of his parents’ house.
Later, refreshed by his bath and wearing a light linen suit, Matthew was on the point of leaving for the Blacketts’ house when the telephone rang. It was Ehrendorf. In the few days which Matthew had now spent in Singapore the two friends had so far managed only one brief meeting. The reason, undoubtedly, was that Ehrendorf was extremely busy. With the rapid decay of the political situation in the Far East his services, Matthew surmised, must be in constant demand for the assessment of British military strength and strategy. However, Matthew was aware of a new feeling of constraint in his friendship with Ehrendorf. How different it was now from the way it had been before! He could not help contrasting that strained meeting at the aerodrome and the subsequent drive into Singapore with their previous meetings in Europe. Matthew, though by nature unobservant, was well aware that Joan was somehow at the root of this new awkwardness. He supposed that Ehrendorf and Joan had had some sort of affair; he remembered the melancholy sigh he had heard from the darkness at the Mayfair on the night of his arrival. But why should that affect his relationship with Ehrendorf?
On the telephone, Ehrendorf sounded more friendly and cheerful, more like his old self. He asked Matthew how he was going to spend the evening, suggesting that they should have a meal together. Matthew explained that Monty had just enlisted him to watch an Irishwoman being fired from a cannon. Perhaps Ehrendorf would like to come, too? As a ‘military observer’ it could almost be considered his duty.
‘OK, I’ll meet you at The Great World. There’s a place where they sell tickets at the main gate, something like the lodge of an Oxford college (inside you’ll find it’s more interesting, though!).’ And Ehrendorf rang off. It was only on his way to the Blacketts’ that Matthew remembered … Joan would be there, too. And that might cause some difficulty.
Presently Matthew found himself in the Blacketts’ drawingroom, waiting for Monty and Joan. While the elderly major-domo went off at a dignified pace to alert some member of the family to his presence Matthew took a quick look at the portrait of his father which hung at the end of the room, then he went to sit down on a sofa. A Chinese ‘boy’ came and placed a packet of cigarettes and some matches at his elbow and then silently withdrew, leaving him alone except for a long-haired Siamese cat curled up on the floor: this was Kate’s beloved pet, Ming Toy. He scooped it up and sat it on his lap. It opened its eyes for a moment, then closed them again.
‘Are you a tom-cat, I wonder?’ he asked the cat, lifting its magnificent tail to inspect its private parts. He began to rummage about in the animal’s fur, peering at it closely for signs of gender. The cat began to purr. Matthew was in the middle of this careful inspection of the cat’s hindquarters (its fur was so long and thick one could only guess at what it might conceal) when Walter came into the room. He gave Matthew a rather odd look. Matthew hurriedly let go of the splendid tail and put the cat back on the carpet.
‘You’re just the man I wanted to see,’ said Walter. ‘I want you to look at some of these paintings of Rangoon and Singapore in the early days.’
20
‘So there you are, my boy, is that not an achievement to be proud of? Over this great area of the globe, covered in steaming swamp and mountain and horrid, horrid jungle, a few determined pioneers, armed only with a little capital and a great creative vision, set the mark of civilization, bringing prosperity to themselves, certainly (though let’s not forget that the crocodiles of bankruptcy and disgrace quietly slipped into the water at their passage, ready to seize the rash or unlucky and drag them down into their watery caverns), but above all, a means of livelihood to the unhappy millions of Asiatics who had been faced by misery and destitution until their coming! Such a man was your father!’
Over the years Walter’s rhetoric as he conducted his guests on a tour of his collection had grown more solemn and impressive. Here and there fanciful touches had crept in (the crocodiles, for example, which nowadays forged after his intrepid capitalists): if they earned their keep he allowed them to stay; otherwise they were discarded. He had grown more convinced himself of the rightness of what he was saying and more indignant at the absence from history books of the great men of commerce. Surely it was unjust that history should only relate the exploits of bungling soldiers, monarchs and politicians, ignoring the merchant whose activities were the very bedrock of civilization and progress!
On the whole Matthew was inclined to agree with Walter: he, too, considered it odd that great commmercial exploits should have been so neglected in the list of man’s achievements. Both courage and a creative intelligence were certainly needed to set up a great commercial enterprise, even one on the scale, relatively small by international standards, of Blackett and Webb. Why, then, did History hesitate? Could it be that History was unhappy about the motives of the great entrepreneurs, or about the social ills that accompanied the undoubted social benefits flowing from these enterprises? Matthew, listening to Walter with one ear, began to ponder this interesting question.
Walter, who had been inclined to fear the worst on first acquaintance with Matthew, had been surprised and gratified to discover that Matthew was quite well-informed about economic conditions in the Far East and in other backward countries of the colonial Empire. Agreed, it was theoretical knowledge, culled from books so that facts and statistics and ideas lodged in his head in a Russian salad of which it was unlikely that any practical use could be made. But still, it was clear that Matthew was interested, as opposed to Monty who was not. Walter even dared to hope that given some experience of the real world of the market-place, and a little time for Joan to make him familiar with the unaccustomed snaffle and bit, something might be made of Matthew, after all. He explained in ringing tones the importance for the morale of Malaya’s native masses of Blackett and Webb’s jubilee celebrations. Soon these native peoples, like the inhabitants of the British Isles, might find themselves having to fight for their country. They needed an idea to fight for. By a happy chance that idea, by general consent, had been found to be embodied in Blackett and Webb’s jubilee slogan: ‘Continuity in Prosperity’! And it was here, went on Walter enthusiastically, that Matthew would have his first opportunity to make a contribution to the War Effort; for the jubilee procession planned for New Year’s day, after a sequence of floats symbolizing the benefits conferred on the Colony by Blackett and Webb, was to have culminated in the founder sitting on a chair borne by grateful employees. Thus the image of Continuity would be stamped indelibly on the native mind. But, alas, Mr Webb’s death had left the chair empty. Who better to fill it than his son, Matthew?
‘Oh well,’ murmured Matthew vaguely, ‘I’d like to help, of course, but that sort of thing isn’t really my cup of tea. Not at all. Hm, why don’t you try Monty? He’d be much better.’
‘Well, we’ll see about that,’ replied Walter somewhat testily, disappointed by Matthew’s lack of enthusiasm. He decided to have a word with Joan: he could see it was high time she started producing some results: ‘Are you and Joan going out this evening?’ he asked after a pause.
Matthew explained about their proposed trip to The Great World.
‘Really, Monty’s the limit,’ Walter muttered to his wife who had just entered.
At this moment Monty and Joan burst into the room, laughing over something. They both stared at Matthew as if surprised to see him there … But no, that had been the arrangement.
‘Well, let’s get going,’ said Monty. ‘We don’t want to miss the show. Besides, Sinclair is waiting in the car.’
‘But Duff and Diana are coming,’ said Mrs Blackett, ‘aren’t you even going to stay and say hello to them?’
But Monty regretted that they had not a moment to spare. Yes, he would see that Joan was not home too late and, yes, he did have the keys of the Pontiac. If you once got stuck with those ‘talkative buggers’ from Westminster, he explained to Matthew on the way out, there was no getting away from the ‘dreary sods’, the evening was as good as ruined.
Standing, for some reason, bolt upright on the back seat of the Pontiac and shading his eyes with his hand, or perhaps saluting although there was nobody in the vicinity except the Malay syce, was a tall, thin Army officer of about Monty’s age. This was none other than that Sinclair Sinclair with whom Joan had enjoyed such an agreeable voyage from Shanghai some years earlier; in the meantime he had exchanged his career in the Foreign Office for a commission in the Army where, thanks to family connections and the dearth of regular officers which attended the outbreak of war, his rise had been swift; now here he was, instead of fighting Jerry in North Africa, called to put his experience of the Far East at the disposal of Malaya Command and pretty fed up, too (as he had explained to Joan), at finding himself a member of the ‘Chairborne Division’!
‘Thank heaven!’ he cried while they were still at some distance. ‘I thought you’d never come. I was beginning to feel like a ca … ca … ca … person abandoned on a desert island!’ and he uttered a shrieking laugh, like the working of a dry pump, and with the same sort of hollow gulping coming from his midriff.
‘I’m Matthew Webb,’ said Matthew, since the young Blacketts, intent on dismissing the syce and installing themselves in the Pontiac, had not bothered to introduce them.
‘Suh … suh … suh … suh … suh … suh …’ Matthew was obliged to pause with his hand in the officer’s while this long string of redundant syllables was dragged out of his mouth like entrails, and his smile grew a little fixed as he waited. But finally, with a gulp and a snap of his teeth, the officer was able to bite off the string and exclaim: ‘… inclair Sinclair!’ Matthew, who had taken an immediate liking to him, nodded encouragingly, wondering whether Sinclair was his first name, last name or both at once. It seemed better not to risk an enquiry.
This time Monty was driving, but no less recklessly than the Malay syce had done on the previous occasion that Matthew had been in this car. As the Pontiac surged down the drive into humid evening and then turned with screaming tyres on to the road, Monty thumped the steering-wheel jubilantly chanting ‘Run, rabbit, run!’ Joan sat in front with her slender, sunburned arm gracefully resting on the back of the seat behind her brother. She was wearing a plain, short-sleeved dress of blue cotton, beautifully ironed. How fresh she looked! ‘She toils not, neither does she spin,’ thought Matthew, gazing in wonder at the beautiful creases in the starched cloth. She turned, her hair tossing in the wind as they hurtled down Grange Road, and gave him a quick, sly smile.
‘I’m going to have to duh … duh … dash off early this evening,’ shouted Sinclair. ‘I go on duty at midnight.’
‘I knew it,’ said Monty. ‘You’re going to be a bore, Sinclair. I feel it in my bones.’
‘No, I’m not,’ protested Sinclair. ‘Must watch out for the jolly old Jap, though.’
‘You are going to be a bore then.’ Monty fell into a moody silence until they were approaching The Great World. ‘It looks as if we’ll have to leave the car and walk. It’s been like this every night for the past few weeks with the bloody troops arriving.’
‘By the way,’ said Matthew, ‘Jim Ehrendorf wanted to come so I said we’d meet him at the gate.’
‘Oh no! That’s all we needed,’ grumbled Monty exchanging a glance with his sister. ‘What did you do that for?’
They parked the Pontiac in River Valley Road and proceeded on foot. Women shuffled along in the crowd carrying on their backs doll-like babies with shaven heads, some asleep, some peering out in wonder at this strange world with black button eyes. Already by the time they had reached the corner of Kim Seng Road the crowd had thickened considerably.
‘Is all this for the human cannonball?’
Monty shook his head. ‘Everything goes on here. You’ll see. People here are crazy about dancing. They bought the dance-floor out of the old Hôtel de l’Europe which used to be the swanky hotel on the padang and had it put here. They sometimes get the orchestras from the P & O boats in dock (or they used to, anyway). Makes a change from Chinks and Filipinos.’
Presently they came to the entrance beneath an archway on which was written in streamlined neon script: The Great World. Here a dense crowd of men and women struggled for admission; among them several men in uniform. Suddenly a man in a lighter uniform caught Matthew by the arm: it was Ehrendorf. ‘I just got here this moment,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Hi there, Monty! Hiya Joan!’
‘What a surprise,’ said Monty without surprise.
‘Jim, I’m not sure that you know, ah, Sinclair …’ said Matthew.
‘Let’s get inside before we get crushed to death,’ said Joan, ignoring Ehrendorf. ‘These soldiers smell like pigs.’
‘Look, I just want to hire someone to watch my car while I’m inside so could you wait a moment?’ said Ehrendorf, his cheerfulness evaporating. ‘I’m afraid the local gashouse gang will have it stripped down if …’
But the young Blacketts had pressed on through the entrance dragging the hesitating Matthew and Sinclair with them.
‘Look, shouldn’t we wait for Jim?’
‘Don’t worry, he’ll find us all right.’
Matthew had a last glimpse of Ehrendorf’s face as Monty propelled him through the entrance and was harrowed to see the expression of suffering on it.
‘See you in a minute then,’ Ehrendorf called after them and hurried away.