The Empire Trilogy (140 page)

‘I say you are
not a wirgin
!'

‘But even so, most likely the Western powers would not even have made the effort they did make to condemn Japan's aggression, had the Japs not attacked Shanghai …'

The young Chinese girl with pigtails, on instructions from the management, had unfastened her bodice, allowing a small lemon-nippled breast to shudder free of its constraining buttons. Meanwhile, its owner pouted over a perplexing sentence she was invited to translate: ‘Romulus and Remus, you are surely about to jump over the walls of Rome, are you not?' (Question expecting the answer ‘Yes'). What did this mean? Was it gibberish deliberately planned as a snare to the unwary, perhaps designed to make one lose face in some subtle occidental way? Surely it could be nothing else? (But wait! That, too, was a question expecting the answer ‘Yes'. She had the feeling that an invisible net had been thrown over her and that an unseen hand was beginning to pull the cords tight.) Well, she could not spend all night trying to penetrate the mysterious workings of the occidental mind so, with a sigh, she passed on to the next question.

‘To be frank, Monty, outside Geneva who cared a damn about Manchuria, or a music-hall place called Eastern Inner Mongolia? But Shanghai was different. When the Japs sent in troops from the International Settlement and bombed unarmed civilians in Chapei, people began to realize that Western business interests were threatened. There were limits, after all. But in the end what action did the Big Powers take?'

Again a dreadful crash! This time it was against the very wall of the room in which they were assembled: the whole building seemed to shake and the framed photograph of Anthony Eden cantered clippety-clop against the wall for a few seconds. ‘I give you “wirgin”!' came a hoarse voice accompanied by a woman's cry.

The row of women stared at Matthew with dull eyes. The Indian, disappointed with the effect they were having on his two customers, had encouraged them to unbutton their blouses and undo their skirts or
sarongs
in order to present themselves more advantageously. The young Chinese girl, having finished her Latin as best she could, had turned to arithmetic. Now she was sitting, stark naked, sucking her pencil over a problem which involved the rate at which a tap filled a bath. What, she wondered, was a tap? And what, come to that, was a bath? She would have to consult her aunt who was one of the older women with scarlet cheekbones.

The Indian was hurrying along beside the stout gesticulating figure of Matthew, trying to draw his attention to the enhanced appearance of his girls. The far door opened a crack and the fat Indian lady, his mother, peered in. She was still holding her bedding and anxious to resume her slumbers. He motioned her away crossly.

‘Uh … uh … uh …' Monty could feel that bubble of air rising.

‘Very young! Soft as rising moon! Or perhaps nice gentleman preferring experience lady with wide knowledge all French and Oriental techniques? Are they, sir, not what doctor ordering?'

‘What?'

‘Experience lady … wide knowledge …'

Matthew, sweat pouring off his brow in torrents, gripped him by the arm and said, blinking fiercely: ‘You may well ask! As a gesture the British, several months too late, declared an arms embargo … but on
both
sides, as if both had been equally guilty. In a couple of weeks it lapsed anyway because the arms manufacturers were big employers and there was a lot of unemployment at the time. So, the Japs had plainly broken the Covenant and got away with it. They left the League, of course, or at least Geneva, the following day. I watched them go myself in a great procession of motor-cars from the Metropole where they'd been staying … There was something horrible about it because it meant the end of everything. I was standing near the Pont de Mont Blanc as they went by on their way to the Gare Cornavin. They went by in silence. Each car that passed was like another support being pulled out from under the League. That was the last we saw of them in Geneva but they left the League in ruins … they and the Big Powers between them. Why? Because this sad defeat of principle at the hands of expediency, this old way of having things settled behind the scenes by degenerate foreign ministries had set a precedent from which we never recovered. Ah, you say that History will find them guilty? Nonsense! History is too muddled and nobody gives a damn about it anyway. Disarmament! Abyssinia! Spain! The same thing was to happen again and again!' Matthew released the Indian and staggering to the couch, sat down with his head in his hands.

Another crash shook the wall and Anthony Eden went clip-pety-clops once more.

‘Uh … uh … uh … aaaaaaah!' Monty belched deafeningly. His expression, which had been careworn, brightened a little and he looked with more interest at the row of women. The Indian, however, was already signalling them to be on their way. Evidently they were not what doctor ordering.

Now he approached Matthew with a large leather-bound album of photographs and beckoned Monty to come and have a look, too. These pictures were of his better, high-class girls, he explained. Matthew gazed at them in wonder. The photographer had surprised many of them in intimate moments and some of them had prices pencilled against them, as on a menu. In a few cases there was the instruction: ‘Client must ordering in advance' or ‘Miss Wu (20 mins.). She weighing one hundred pounds of tropical charm.' Or even ‘Miss Shirley Mao (2 pers.)'.

The Indian, seeing Matthew reading with interest, pointed with a grubby finger and said: ‘She personally recommending, sir.'

‘Are some of these girls refugees from the war in China?' asked Matthew.

The Indian's eyes narrowed as he tried to penetrate the signification of this remark. ‘You wanting refugee-girl?' he asked carefully. And he, too, studied the album, wondering which of the girls would best accommodate this special interest. ‘I finding Japan-bombing-Chinese-refugee-cripplegirl. Very interesting. You drink beer waiting ten five minutes. I find.'

‘Let's go,' said Monty. ‘Give the man a dollar for the beer and a couple of dollars for the girls. Otherwise we'll be here all night.'

‘You staying, please, nice gentlemen,' cried the Indian. ‘No, you going out,' he shouted at his mother who was trying to sneak back in again with her bedding. ‘No, you must signing police book,' he howled as Monty made for the door. He produced a grimy ledger. Monty made a quick scribble in it and handed the pencil to Matthew who signed carefully, looking at the list of other signatures.

‘Good heavens!' he exclaimed, hastening down the stairs after Monty. ‘Did you see whose names were in the Visitors' Book? The Archbishop of Canterbury and Sir Robert Brooke-Popham have both been here tonight!' He paused dizzily to steady himself against the wall. Monty rolled his eyes to heaven and plunged out into the night, saying over his shoulder: ‘People don't sign their own names in places like this, you idiot!'

‘I say you
are not
a wirgin!' echoed after them into the empty street. A distant crash, a faint cry, and all was quiet. Singapore slept peacefully under the bright, equatorial sky. The shadow of a cat slipped through the street. A child cried. A weary coolie dragged his rickshaw home. An old man sighed in his sleep somewhere. Presently, in two or three hours from now would come the first faint drone of Japanese bombers approaching from the north-east. But for the moment all was quiet.

The taxi-driver (it was still the grandfatherly Malay with white hair who had been driving them earlier in the evening), seeing Matthew stagger as he got out of the cab at the gate of the Mayfair, assumed him to be drunk and asked him if he would like a massage because he knew of a certain place … But Matthew shook his head. He felt weak and dizzy: all he wanted to do was to plunge into bed. He said good night to Monty and set off up the short drive towards the Mayfair Building; with a growl of its engine the taxi was gone, leaving only a deep sigh of relief floating in the empty air where it had been standing. Monty, bound on pleasure, this time did not intend to be thwarted.

‘I must have caught some fever,' Matthew thought as he climbed the steps and dragged open the protesting outer door to the verandah. This thought was followed by another, still more distressing: perhaps he had caught the Singapore Grip! Certainly an illness of some kind had taken hold of him. He had half expected to find the Major smoking a cigar on the verandah, but though an electric light was burning, there was no sign of him. Nor was Dupigny anywhere to be seen. So tempting, however, was the prospect of resting his weary body without delay that Matthew allowed himself to be diverted into the nearest rattan armchair, where he lay panting and perspiring while he recovered a little of his strength. Almost immediately his eyelids dropped and he fell into a doze.

But in only a matter of moments he was woken again by the screeching hinges of the outer door. Someone was coming in. He struggled to sit up and look alert but his eyes seemed to have slipped out of focus and for some moments only presented him with a grey blur. Then he found himself face to face with Joan who was saying: ‘We saw the light from the road as Jim was on his way home and we thought we'd just call in to say good night.'

‘That was nice of you,' said Matthew warmly. Ehrendorf had come in with Joan but was sitting on the arm of a bamboo chair half in the shadows of the door.

‘And Jim wanted to have a word with you,' Joan went on.

‘If it's about what we were discussing earlier,' said Matthew, aware that his eyes were trying to slip out of focus again, ‘about, you know, the colonial question and so forth, well, the point I was trying to make is that we must allow the
whole
country to develop. At the moment what it amounts to is that we only allow the native people to work in agriculture because we insist on selling them our own manufactures. Let me give you an example…'

‘No, no, it wasn't about that,' cried Joan hastily. ‘Jim will tell you. Go on, you said you would,' she added accusingly while Ehrendorf stirred uneasily on the edge of the circle of light and perhaps contemplated whatever it was that he had had in mind to say to Matthew.

In the meantime another layer of gauze had been removed from Matthew's memory of what had gone on earlier in the evening, so that now at last he began to think: ‘What a miracle that they should have made it up after the row they were having an hour or two ago!'

‘Go on, you
did say
you would.'

Ehrendorf's pale, handsome face continued to stare mutely at Matthew from out of the semi-darkness and he sighed. A motorcar passed up the road with a deep, chugging sound; the reflected light from its headlights glowed in thin slices through the unrolled blinds of split bamboo. Finally Ehrendorf said: ‘I just wanted to say, Matthew, that I expect I shall be leaving Singapore in a day or two … Another posting, I guess you'd call it. Not yet sure where
to
. I realized this evening that Joan and I … Ah, no future in our relationship … Best of friends … Hm, wish each other well, naturally …' He fell silent.

‘There,' said Joan.

‘What? You're leaving? And I've only just arrived! That really is a shame!' exclaimed Matthew, distressed. Ehrendorf had sunk his head briefly in his hands to give his face a weary polish. ‘It's time I was getting home,' he said. But whether he meant to America or to his flat in Singapore it was impossible to say.

For some moments Matthew had been aware that there was something odd about Ehrendorf's appearance. It was this: his uniform clung to him as if it were sopping wet. Indeed, staring more closely at it Matthew saw that it was several shades darker than it should have been and clung to his skin. His hair, too, was plastered down as if a bucket of water had been emptied over him. Moreover, a pool of water had collected round his shoes and was advancing slowly into the circle of light.

‘We shall both certainly miss you,' said Joan brightly.

‘I guess it's about time I packed my grip and moved on some place else,' said Ehrendorf with a wry, bitter smile.

Matthew, on the point of bringing up the question of Ehrendorf's sodden clothing, was diverted by this last remark into asking if, by the way, either of them happened to know what a Singapore Grip might be, was it a fever of some sort? Ehrendorf seemed taken aback by this question: after a moment's consideration he said he thought it was a suitcase made of rattan, like a Shanghai Basket, as they were called, only smaller. If that was what they were he had one himself. Joan, however, said no. In an authoritative tone she declared it to be a patent double-bladed hairpin which some women used to curl their hair after they had washed it. This brief excursion into lexicography served to add a further element of confusion to a scene which Matthew had already found sufficiently puzzling. There were questions which must be asked, he felt, to straighten everything out. And he must think of them immediately for Ehrendorf, plucking dejectedly at his wet trousers, was already getting to his feet. He must ask about the pool of water where Ehrendorf had been sitting, and about his departure and Joan and the Singapore Grip. But his eyes chose this critical moment to become a blur through which nothing could be seen, though his mind remained as keen as ever and he heard a voice which reminded him of his own saying a cheery good night to some people who were leaving. Some moments went by while he sat quietly waiting for clear vision to be restored. When it had been, he found himself sitting opposite an empty chair beneath which was a little pool of water. Something else glistened on a rattan table not far away: it was a small handbag of white leather which Joan must have forgotten.

‘I must be quite seriously ill and undoubtedly I should call a doctor before it's too late.' But again he closed his eyes and, again, within a few moments, was obliged to open them, this time because he had heard a crunch of gravel and a creak of the wooden steps which led up to the house. The Major, perhaps, or Dupigny returning home, he surmised. They would certainly help him to make contact with a doctor. It was Joan, however, in excellent spirits.