The Empire Trilogy (136 page)

Another hasty conference took place, this time around the breech. While it was taking place the men with the ropes, somewhat apprehensively, darted up the ramp under the eye of the cannon, seized the armoured-car and carried it back to its original position; then they took up their stations once more with the ropes. Presently, after another roll of drums and a few adjustments by a man with a spanner, they were again given the signal to start pulling. The armoured-car began to climb! Ten … nine … eight … The nervous strain was clearly telling on the men with the ropes: the vehicle was advancing jerkily, now halting, now bounding forward. Three … two … one … Fire! A tremendous explosion echoed around The Great World and a white projectile went winging its way in a glittering arc beneath the black vault of the sky. Swooning with excitement, the men with the ropes gave a great pull: the armoured-car shot over the top of the ramp and down the other side just as Miss Kennedy-Walsh hurtled by where it had been standing an instant before; on she went to land helmet first in the net; there she jumped and arched and flapped like a netted salmon.

Missed! This was not a contingency for which the men holding the ropes had prepared themselves. They looked at each other helplessly. What were they to do? Even the most perfunctory realism required them to continue pulling. The armoured-car turned its nose hesitatingly towards ‘Fortress Singapore' and continued, slowly but steadily, to convey its wavering cargo of grinning, bespectacled Japanese towards where the cannon loomed, bereft of ammunition. A roar of indignation went up from the crowd. The master of ceremonies hurriedly intervened and the armoured car was whisked away, Miss Kennedy-Walsh took a bow. A collection in favour of the Nanyang Anti-Enemy Backing-up Society was announced.

‘Let's go and have a drink,' said Monty, who seemed satisfied with the way the show had turned out despite the nonappearance of the Da Sousa Sisters. As they made their way towards the exit the crowd was beginning to sing: ‘God save glacious King!'

They set off down another alley; the crowds strolling up and down had grown even more dense than they had been earlier. Monty, Joan and Sinclair walked in front. Matthew followed at a little distance with Ehrendorf; he wanted to think of some way of comforting his friend who was still clearly upset by the way Joan had changed places in the enclosure. Moreover, he was worried that if he walked beside Joan, she might not be able to resist the temptation of holding his hand in full view of the others, thus causing Ehrendorf further unnecessary chagrin. Matthew could not help thinking it curious that she should find him attractive. Very few other women ever had. He had tried to accept this, as he tried to accept everything, philosophically.

But above all Matthew simply wanted to talk with his old friend and to recover their former intimacy, for Ehrendorf was one of those rare people who could be interesting whatever he talked about. Matthew enjoyed argument and speculation the way other people enjoy a game of tennis. Furthermore, although he did not mind the particular, it was the general which really stirred him. It was not enough for him to know, for example, that two Catholics were pitched out of a window in Prague in the interests of the Jesuits and Ferdinand of Styria early in the seventeenth century (as it would be for you and me), Matthew immediately wanted to investigate the general implications of the deed. And he would speculate lovingly on whether or not it had been
necessary
(not merely a coincidence) that a period of intolerance should follow the Emperor Rudolph's liberal reign, or on some other quite different aspect of the matter … on religion as against economics as a cause of war, or (even more far-fetched) on the effect of windows, and of glass generally, on the Bohemian psyche, or on the marriage of physical and mental enlightenment (windows, lamps, electric light advancing hand in hand with rational thought) in the progress of humanity.

Of course, people change. Matthew and Ehrendorf had both undoubtedly changed in the years since they had argued into the night in Oxford and Geneva. Matthew had realized even in Geneva that he himself was beginning to change: he no longer enjoyed arguing with his friends, above all those who had embraced the academic life, quite as much as he had once done. It was not simply that these friends had tended to adopt the lugubrious and self-important air which distinguishes academics: surrounded by the paralysing comforts, conveniences and irritations of university life what else could they do? He sensed that what distressed him was a gap which had opened up between thought and feeling, the remoteness, the impartiality of his friends to the subjects they were teaching or studying. Objectivity, he had had to agree with them, was important obviously. But what was required, he had declared, striding up and down with their vintage port inside him while they eyed him dubiously wondering whether he would wake the children, was ‘a passionate objectivity' (whatever that might be). He had usually found himself taking the last bus home feeling muddled and dissatisfied with himself as well as with his friends. Yet with Ehrendorf it had always been a little different, perhaps because, coming from a military family, he had chosen to become a soldier rather than an academic, though more likely it was simply a difference of personality. Whatever the reason, in Geneva he had always found it delightfully easy to discuss things with Ehrendorf.

Now, just as if they had been strolling along the Quai Wilson instead of through a pulsing, perfumed, malodorous, humid, tropical evening, Matthew brushed aside some trivial enquiry from Ehrendorf about Sinclair (who was he? how long had Joan known him? were they particularly close friends, perhaps even childhood friends?) and reverted to the important matter which had stopped him in his tracks earlier. Could the coming of western capital to the Far East be seen as progress from the natives' point of view?

‘I'm sure you've heard Walter's lecture on how he and my father and some other merchants transformed Burma from a country, where, unless a coconut fell off a tree, nobody had any supper, into a modern rice-exporting nation … I gather he delivers it to everyone he comes across …'

‘Well,' sighed Ehrendorf, automatically falling into his old Oxford habits, ‘it all depends what you mean by …'

‘Progress? Or natives?'

‘Well, by both, I guess,' Ehrendorf smiled faintly, ‘since there was massive immigration of Indians and
their
situation must have been different from that of the Burmese. Walter certainly exaggerates. Burma was a fertile and prosperous country before the British took over. But you mustn't think that a barter economy is like Paradise before the Fall: a cash economy has more resources to survive floods, typhoons, and whatnot, even if it does introduce certain difficulties of its own which were not there before.'

‘Difficulties! Why, the rice merchants knocked Burma for six! The whole culture was destroyed. The old communal village life collapsed. Almost overnight it became every man for himself. People started fencing off grazing land which used to belong to the whole village and so forth. Profit took a grip on the country like some dreadful new virus against which nobody had any resistance. When the Burmese were reduced to becoming migrant seasonal workers in the paddy fields the old village life was finished off completely … and with it went everything that made life more than a pure money-grubbing exercise. At one time they used to hold elaborate cattle races, and water festivals, and village dances and theatricals and puppet shows. They all vanished. And what replaced them? A huge increase in the crime rate! To be happy people need to live in communities. If you don't believe me you can read it in the government reports!'

‘Sure, I believe you,' said Ehrendorf rather vaguely. ‘But still, this is a partial view. You must look at the whole picture.

‘By the way, just look at that Indian bloke over there in his striped tie and cricket blazer, modelled on some fatuous English tradition that has no
real
meaning for him at all. He's borrowed a culture that doesn't fit him any better than his jacket.'

Ehrendorf, while looking at the whole picture, had also had his eye on the Blacketts and Sinclair some way in front of them; perhaps he, too, was no longer as keen as he used to be on abstract discussions, or perhaps he was preoccupied with other matters. He had grown thinner since he and Matthew had last met in Europe and had developed one or two hesitations in his manner which had not been there before. Once or twice Matthew had been on the verge of that nightmare sensation when you suddenly find yourself thinking: ‘But I don't know this person at all!' and the person in question happens to be your closest friend. But now a glance at Ehrendorf reassured him: it was the same old Ehrendorf, except for the moustache; a little older, of course, and not quite so cheerful and self-confident as he had once been. But then, he himself had aged, too.

Ehrendorf's fine eyes rested on Joan's botttom as she walked some distance ahead between her brother and Sinclair; the light blue, neatly ironed cotton of her dress picked up the glow of naphtha lanterns as she passed each stall so that, from a distance, it seemed that her figure flared and died, flared and died, almost hypnotically. Very often a girl's bottom begins to sag in her twenties (which does not matter particularly since few people notice or care whether a bottom has dropped or not) but Joan's had not done so; from behind you might have thought that she was simply a mature adolescent. Nor had she developed those over-bulging cones of tissue at the top of the thigh which sometimes bestow even on a slender woman a saddle-bag effect. ‘Her bottom is too perfect,' Ehrendorf might have been thinking as he stared ahead in a trance. ‘It's too beautiful to get a purchase on, like everything else about her, it simply slips out of your hand.'

Matthew, however, could not be expected to notice this sort of thing. Besides, it was doubtful whether, even if he had been interested, he would have been able to see far enough without taking off his spectacles and polishing them: in the course of the evening a thick film of dust had collected on the lenses.

‘Sinclair must be a new arrival in Singapore, I should think,' remarked Ehrendorf. ‘Although he seems to know his way round OK.' This was undoubtedly a statement rather than a question but, nevertheless, a vague air of interrogation lingered about it. Matthew, however, paid no attention: he was evidently still too busy trying to express what was in his mind.

‘Let me give you an example, Jim, of what happens when cash and the idea of profit strike root in a country unaccustomed to them like Burma. It seems that's there a ghastly Darwinian principle of economics known as the Law of Substitution which declares, more or less, that “the cheapest will survive”. This has all sorts of unpleasant consequences, one of which is that non-economic values tend to be eliminated. In Burma they used to build beautiful, elaborately carved cargo-boats which looked like galleons: these have been entirely replaced over the past fifty years by flat barges which can transport paddy more cheaply. And it's the same everywhere you look: native art and craft replaced by cheap imported substitutes, handlooms have disappeared, pottery has given way to petrol tins. Even the introduction of new crops by western capital has tended to impoverish rather than enrich the life people lead. In Burma the natives used to cook with sesamum oil, now they use ground-nut oil because, though it doesn't taste so good, it's cheaper. In Java people have taken to eating cassava instead of rice because it's cheaper …'

‘If it's cheaper,' protested Ehrendorf, ‘then they have more wealth to spend on other things.'

‘Not so! If they can live more cheaply it stands to reason that they can be paid less, provided there's no shortage of labour. Yes, exactly, it's our old friend “the iron law” up to its tricks again! What additional wealth may be generated by the use of cheaper methods and cheaper foods doesn't cling to the natives: the extra saving goes to swell the profits of the western businesses which control the land or the market … like Blackett and Webb! The native masses are worse off than before. For them the coming of Capitalism has really been like the spreading of a disease. Their culture is gone, their food is worse and their communities have been broken up by the need to migrate for work on estates and in paddy fields. Well, am I right?'

‘But Marx believed, did he not, that such a stage is necessary in the progress of society from feudalism to Communism and therefore even saw the British in India as a force for progress.'

‘You can't have it both ways! What you and Marx say is fine … that is, if Communism is what you
want.
But what if we reach this stage where the poor are made poorer and organized into gangs of coolies and then … lo and behold,
there is no revolution
! Are the natives not worse off than they were in their traditional communities? Of
course
they are! You still have to show me what advantages the coming of western capital has brought, in Burma at any rate.' After a moment Matthew added: ‘In any event, my bet is that in practice Communism would be scarcely any better than Capitalism, and perhaps even worse.'

Ahead of them Monty, Joan and Sinclair had disappeared into the Wing Choon Yuen Restaurant whose palatial entrance was partly screened from the alley by a substantial brick and pillar wall: on top of this wall neat rows of palms had been set in brown earthenware pots decorated with dragons. Ehrendorf said: ‘This is still a partial view, Matthew. No doubt there is something in what you say. But in the West, too, craftsmen have been unable to survive mass-production, capitalism and the Law of Substitution. That's life, I guess.' He shrugged and added with a smile: ‘There's another principle which I shall call Ehrendorf's Law which is now in operation in all prosperous Western countries and which asserts “the survival of the easiest”. Twenty years from now coffee beans will have disappeared and we'll drink nothing but Camp Coffee, not because liquid coffee tastes better … it tastes worse … but because it's easier to prepare. Pretty soon nobody will read books or learn to play the piano because it's easier to listen to the radio or phonograph. Mark my words! Ehrendorf's Law will do just as much damage in the long run! All the same, Matthew, I can't agree with you because you neatly avoid mentioning all the benefits of western civilization, the social welfare, education, medicine and so forth. But let's discuss that another time. And by the way, it has just occurred to me, if this guy Sinclair
had
been an old family friend of the Blacketts I'm sure I'd have seen him or heard of him in the last couple of years …'