The Empire Trilogy (134 page)

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.

Matthew now found that he had been shoved into a great circular concourse in the middle of which stood a thicket of bamboo and palms. On one hand was an open-air café whose tables were thronged with rowdy troops drinking beer, on the other a billiards saloon through the tall open windows of which Matthew glimpsed green pyramids of smoke-filled light above the tables and oriental faces glimmering in the surrounding darkness. Farther along was a great hall from within which there came the regular thump of drums and sighing of saxophones.

Together they struck off through the crowd which in some places was so thick that they had to shoulder their way through, passing along a street of stalls with corrugated-iron roofs and flimsy, brightly lit fronts. Some of these stalls were open-air eating-houses festooned with lurid, naked, pink-eyed chickens hung by their necks on hooks, lidded eyes closed in death; beside them were piled varnished ducks and lumps of meat swimming in grease and studded with fat flies gorging themselves; next to the meat laboured a wizened specialist in fish dumplings, and next to him a family of plump Malays beside bubbling cauldrons of
nasi padang
, giant prawns, curried eggs, nuts and
ikan bilis
(dried fish no bigger than your fingernail), all being shovelled on to plates or twisted in cones of leaves. Here a groaning lady was being sawn in half, there another was being put through a mincer with blood horribly gushing out underneath; next came a shooting-gallery where an Australian sergeant in his wide-brimmed hat was using an air-rifle to smash blackened light-bulbs to the jeers of his comrades, and a striptease stall; a neighbouring stall displayed a sign warning of
Waning Virility
: ‘Please swallow our Sunlight Pill for Male Persons, Moonlight Pill for Female Persons. Guaranteed.' Beneath the sign was a display of medicine bottles together with a crude and alarming diagram in coloured crayon which was evidently intended to represent sexual organs.

As Matthew paused to study it his arm was suddenly taken by a tall and slender Tamil girl with a pigtail (in which jasmine flowers were intricately braided) hanging to her waist. He nudged up his spectacles to see her better, gazing with surprise into her dark face where a silver stud gleamed in the whorl of each nostril. She was very pretty and he would have liked to talk to her, but the others were already disappearing; and so he disengaged himself apologetically and hurried after them, his heart thumping. How exciting it all was, how much more interesting than Geneva!

Now, hurrying through the crowds in search of his friends, he almost ran full tilt into a makeshift stage (merely boards and trestles) on which a Chinese opera was taking place. Actors and actresses in glorious costumes were declaiming in a penetrating falsetto, impervious to the scene-shifter in khaki shorts and singlet and with a cigarette dangling from his mouth who was rearranging the furniture around them. One of them, with a forked beard reaching to his knees, stalked off into the wings, rolling his eyes in histrionic rage, and a murmur went up from the crowd of Chinese who had gathered to watch. On his way round the side to rejoin the alley which he had left Matthew found himself gazing into the dressing-room, for the sides and back of this miniature theatre were covered only by cloth hangings blowing about in the breeze and allowing him a glimpse of the actresses making-up for the next scene: elaborately rouged and pink-powdered faces glared at mirrors while tweezers prepared a further assault on already well-plucked eyebrows. Several tiny Chinese girls clung to wooden spars also peering in at this arresting sight.

Afraid that he had lost his friends altogether, he pressed on; his progress was slow, nevertheless, for his attention was captured by various wonders which sprang up one after another: a man selling bunches of dried frogs tied together by their legs, a family of acrobats turning somersaults, a stall selling the juices of unfamiliar fruits by the glass, a wizened cashier in a bamboo cage,
satay
morsels skewered on hundreds of bamboo spills roasting over charcoal, sellers of
soto
soup, and
won ton mee
, and apple fritters fizzing in rancid-smelling oil, and
nasi goreng
, and heavenly ice-cream flavoured with mango and durian, and the durian itself, so desired and so dreaded for its peculiar odour, piled in pyramids like cannonballs … and other astonishing sights and events beyond description, taking place, too, in a street crowded with men and women of every shape, size and colour, from a family of performing pygmies, to the graceful, delicate Chinese, to floury, bucolic British and Dutch in voluminous khaki shorts; and accompanied by a cacophony of musical instruments and gramophones in an atmosphere heavy with perfume, incense, sandalwood, sweat and tobacco smoke in the soft, humid air of the tropics.