The Empire Trilogy Part 38

Rereading that, I'm aware of an uncanny parallel between the "wild young fellow," presumably a Sinn Fein organizer, who wouldn't be swept away, and his creator, who would; and I'm reminded of some remarks, in a piece Jim wrote on his early reading, about the "hallucinating clarity of image" he admired in Conrad and Richard Hughes. He talks too about Loti's Pecheur d'Islande Pecheur d'Islande which he read at school: which he read at school: I realised with surprise that I was becoming intensely interested in this story of Breton fishermen and their difficulties .... So powerful an impression did this book make on me that even today there are certain phenomena for which an expression of Loti's will alone suffice. A certain wintry light over the sea, for example, still conjures up Loti's lumiere blafarde lumiere blafarde. I had no idea then, nor have I now, of the precise meaning of blafard. blafard. In my own mind it bears such perfect witness as it is, that to find its accepted meaning might prove an inconvenience. In my own mind it bears such perfect witness as it is, that to find its accepted meaning might prove an inconvenience.

Well, the Oxford French Dictionary gives "pale, pallid, wan, sallow, dull, leaden." But of course Jim is perfectly right: none of them is sufficiently blafard blafard, with its edge of wildness, insanity even.

There was nothing obviously wild, much less insane, about the man I knew. Eccentric, yes; outspoken too. Adopting John Berger's precedent, he continued the practice, now alas in abeyance, whereby the recipient of a Booker Prize should bite the feeding hand in no uncertain terms. Presented with his winning check for The Siege of Krishnapur The Siege of Krishnapur, he made a short speech of thanks in his mild, wandering voice and took the opportunity to criticize conditions on the Booker McConnell plantations in the West Indies.

"We devote too much time to satisfying the ego, time which could be better spent in fruitful speculation or in the service of the senses; in any case, owning things one doesn't need for some primary purpose, and that includes almost everything, has gone clean out of fashion. I'm sorry to have to break this news of the death of materialism so bluntly; I'm afraid it will come as a shock to some of your readers." Thus spake Jim when, an unlikely fashion journalist, I interviewed him for Vogue Vogue in 1974. Ascetic epicurean, gregarious solitary, aristocrat of the spirit, he was then entering upon the late, disinterested "Marxist" phase (though he was never really a Marxist) which would issue in his most ambitious work, in 1974. Ascetic epicurean, gregarious solitary, aristocrat of the spirit, he was then entering upon the late, disinterested "Marxist" phase (though he was never really a Marxist) which would issue in his most ambitious work, The Singapore Grip The Singapore Grip, with its clear-eyed depiction of economic imperialism at work in Southeast Asia and the Far East.

But there's an intimation of something else too in his hip Vogue Vogue prophecy. When, at his mother's suggestion, my wife and I visited the Kilcrohane house in 1981, we found on his desk and bookshelves j.a.panese dictionaries and Buddhist texts which seemed to indicate the way his thoughts were tending during his last year, and even to reveal an important, if barely visible, aspect of his nature; for his early brush with death and subsequent singularity had developed in him a mystical strain, one which expressed itself in impatience with London and withdrawal to the silence of West Cork-there, in an old phrase, to make his soul. When the wise man grows weary of the world, said the Buddha, he becomes empty of desire; prophecy. When, at his mother's suggestion, my wife and I visited the Kilcrohane house in 1981, we found on his desk and bookshelves j.a.panese dictionaries and Buddhist texts which seemed to indicate the way his thoughts were tending during his last year, and even to reveal an important, if barely visible, aspect of his nature; for his early brush with death and subsequent singularity had developed in him a mystical strain, one which expressed itself in impatience with London and withdrawal to the silence of West Cork-there, in an old phrase, to make his soul. When the wise man grows weary of the world, said the Buddha, he becomes empty of desire; when he is empty of desire, he becomes free; when he is free he knows that he is free, that rebirth is at an end, that virtue is accomplished, that duty is done and that there is no more returning to this world; thus he knows.

-DEREK MAHON Dublin, 1999

For Bob and Kathie Parrish

Author's Note.

Odd though it may seem to attach a bibliography to a work of fiction, this novel depends very heavily on primary research conducted by others, as well as on opinions and personal experiences recorded by those who travelled, worked or fought in the Far East before or during the last War. Nevertheless the Singapore of these pages does not pretend to be anything but fictional: although many of its bricks are real, its architecture is entirely fantastic.

J.G.F.

Part One

1.

The city of Singapore was not built up gradually, the way most cities are, by a natural deposit of commerce on the banks of some river or at a traditional confluence of trade routes. It was simply invented one morning early in the nineteenth century by a man looking at a map. 'Here,' he said to himself, 'is where we must have a city, half-way between India and China. This will be the great halting-place on the trade route to the Far East. Mind you, the Dutch will dislike it and Penang won't be pleased, not to mention Malacca.' This man's name was Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles: before the war his bronze statue used to stand in Empress Place in a stone alcove like a scallop sh.e.l.l (he has been moved along now and, turned to stone, occupies a shady spot by the river). He was by no means the lantern-jawed individual you might have expected: indeed, a rather vague-looking man in a frock coat.

Although people had once lived there, the island of Singapore, when he arrived, was largely deserted except for a prodigious quant.i.ty of rats and centipedes. Rather ominously, Raffles also noticed a great many human skulls and bones, the droppings of local pirates. He wasted no time, however, in negotiating for the island with an alarmed native and then proceeded, his biographer tells us, to set up a flag-pole thirty-six feet high. 'Our object,' he wrote in a letter to a friend, 'is not territory but trade: a great commercial emporium, and a fulcrum fulcrum, whence we may extend our influence politically as circ.u.mstances may hereafter require.' As he stood there on that lonely beach and gazed up at the flag with rats and centipedes seething and tumbling over his shoes did Raffles foresee the prosperity which lay ahead for Singapore? Undoubtedly he did.

When you think of the city as it was forty years ago you should not imagine an uncivilized frontier-town of the jungle. You had only to stroll around the centre of the city with its wide avenues and lawns and look at the monolithic government buildings, at the luxurious department stores and at the marmoreal dignity of the banks, to realize that Singapore was the work of a great and civilized nation. True, there were other parts of the city, the various native quarters where Tamils, Malays, and above all the Chinese lived, which were rather less imposing. There, in those 'lower depths' Chinese secret societies undoubtedly performed monstrous crimes, kidnapped their own prominent citizens, fought out appalling territorial battles, stunned themselves with drugs and so forth. If you were merely a visitor, a sailor, say, in those years before the war, Singapore would undoubtedly have seemed no less tawdry, no less exciting than another of the great Eastern sea ports. You would have gone to drink and dance at one of the amus.e.m.e.nt parks, perhaps even at The Great World itself, whose dance-hall, a vast, echoing barn of a place, had for many years entertained lonely sailors like yourself. There, for twenty-five cents, you could dance with the most beautiful taxi-girls in the East, listen to the loudest bands and admire the glorious dragons painted on the walls. In the good old days, before the troops started flooding in at the beginning of the War, that place could swallow an entire ship's company and still seem empty except for you and the two or three Chinese girls with dolls' painted faces sitting at your table, ready to support you with tiny but firm hands should you look like plunging to the floor full of Tiger beer.

There, too, when you staggered outside into the sweltering night, you would have been able to inhale that incomparable smell of incense, of warm skin, of meat cooking in coconut oil, of honey and frangipani, and hair-oil and l.u.s.t and sandalwood and heaven knows what, a perfume like the breath of life itself. And from the roof of the Seamen's Inst.i.tute, or from some other less respectable roof, you might have seen the huge purple sign advertising Tiger Balm and, beside it, once darkness had completely fallen, its guardian, the great sabre-toothed tiger with glowing orange stripes beginning its nightly prowl over the sleeping roofs of Singapore. But there is no denying it, certain parts of the city were tawdry and others were wretched, and becoming more so as the age advanced: already, by 1940, the walls of cheap hotels and boarding-houses. hitherto impermeable except to an occasional m.u.f.fled groan or sigh, were becoming porous and beginning to leak radio music, tw.a.n.gings of guitars and news bulletins. Every great city has its seamy side. And so let us look for preference at the gentler parts of the city at the elegant European suburb of Tanglin, for instance, where Walter Blackett, chairman of the ill.u.s.trious merchant and agency house of Blackett and Webb Limited, lived with his family.

At first glance Tanglin resembled any quiet European suburb with its winding, tree-lined streets and pleasant bungalows. There was a golf course close at hand with quite respectable greens; numerous tennis courts could be seen on the other side of sweet-smelling hedges and even a swimming pool or two. It was a peaceful and leisurely life that people lived here, on the whole. Yet if you looked more closely you would see that it was a suburb ready to burst at the seams with a dreadful tropical energy. Foliage sprang up on every hand with a determination unknown to our own polite European vegetation. Dark, glistening green was smeared over everything as if with a palette knife, while in the gloom (the jungle tends to be gloomy) something sinister which had been making a noise a little while ago was now holding its breath.

If you left your bungalow unattended for a few months while you went home on leave, very likely you would come back to find that green lariats had been thrown over every projecting part and were wrestling it to the ground, that powerful ferns were drilling their way between its bricks, or that voracious house-eating insects, which were really nothing more than sharp jaws mounted on legs, had been making meals of the woodwork. Moreover, the mosquitoes in this particular suburb were only distant cousins of the mild insects which irritate us on an English summer evening: in Tanglin you had to face the dreaded anopheles variety, each a tiny flying hypodermic syringe containing a deadly dose of malaria. And if, by good fortune, you managed to avoid malaria there was still another mosquito waiting in the wings, this one clad in striped football socks, ready to inject you with dengue fever. If your child fell over while playing in the garden and cut its knee, you had better make sure that no fly was allowed to settle on the wound; otherwise, within a day or two, you would find yourself picking tiny white maggots out of it with tweezers. At that time, when parts of the suburb were still bordered by jungle, it was by no means uncommon for monkeys, snakes and suchlike to visit your garden with the idea of picking your fruit or swallowing your mice (or even your puppy if you had an appetizing one). But all I mean to suggest is that, besides the usual comforts of suburban life, there were certain disadvantages, too.

Not far from where the Blacketts lived Orchard Road sloped gently down (a gradient that was more psychological than real) almost straight for a mile or so until it lost itself on the fringes of Chinatown and the commercial city where Walter had his headquarters on Collyer Quay and did battle on weekdays. Down there in the city, taking the place of the rats and the centipedes which had once made it their home, seething, devouring, copulating, businesses rose and fell, sank their teeth into each other, swallowed, broke away, gulped down other firms, or mounted each other to procreate smaller companies, just as they do elsewhere in other great capitalist cities. But up here in Tanglin people moved in a quiet and orderly way about their daily affairs, apparently detached from these sordid encounters, detached especially from the densely packed native ma.s.ses below. And yet they moved, one might suppose, as the hands of a clock move. Imagine a clock in a gla.s.s case; the hands move unruffled about their business, but at the same time we can see the working of springs and wheels and cogs. That ordered life in Tanglin depended on the same way on the city below, and on the mainland beyond the Causeway, whose trading, mining and plantation concerns might represent wheels and cogs while their mute, gigantic labour force are the springs, steadily causing pressures to be transmitted from one part of the organism to another ... and not just as that time or just to Tanglin, of course, but much further in time and in s.p.a.ce: to you thousands of miles away, reading in bed or in a deck-chair on the lawn, or to me as I sit writing at a table.

2.

The Blacketts, on the whole, had reason to be satisfied with the calm and increasingly prosperous life they were leading in Singapore in 1937. Only once or twice in the two decades following the Great War had anything occurred to disturb their peace of mind and even then nothing that could be considered particularly serious. True, their elder daughter, Joan, had shown signs of becoming involved with unsuitable young men ... but that is the sort of thing that any family with growing children has to expect.

Although his wife, Sylvia, became greatly agitated, Walter himself was inclined to take it calmly at first. Joan, who had recently returned from a finishing school in Switzerland, had found it hard to settle down in Singapore, separated from the friends she had made in Europe. She was rebellious, contemptuous of the provincial manners of the Straits, as one naturally would be, Walter supposed, after being at such a school (the school, incidentally, had been her mother's idea). Given time it was something that she would get over.

Joan's involvement with the first of these young men, a penniless flight-lieutenant whom she had met n.o.body knew where, was an act of rebellion probably. Even Joan had not tried very hard to pretend that he was anything but impossible. Besides, she knew well enough what her parents, who took a dim view of the Services, thought of even those generals and air vice-marshals whom duty had called to Singapore, let us not speak of flight-lieutenants. Walter had not set eyes on the person in question because Joan had had the good sense not to try to bring him home. He had waited calmly for her to see reason, explaining with a touch of exasperation to his wife that her tears and her fretting were a waste of energy which she could use to greater profit in some other direction, because Joan would presently come to her senses with or without the aid of her mother's tears. In due course, it had taken a little longer than he had expected, Walter's confidence had been justified. Joan had disposed of the flight-lieutenant as surrept.i.tiously as she had found him. Tranquillity had returned to the Blackett household for a while.

Presently, however, it transpired that Mrs Blackett, testing the material of one of Joan's cotton frocks beween her finger and thumb, felt an unexpected crinkle of paper. Ah, what was this? Something left by the laundry? Mrs Blackett had happened to grasp the light material of her daughter's frock just where there was a pocket. Joan, who was in the frock at the time, blushed and said that it was nothing in particular, just a piece of paper of no importance. 'In that case,' replied Mrs Blackett, 'we had better throw it away immediately, because it does not do to let our clothes bulge out in an ugly fashion by carrying unnecessary things in our pockets.' Quick as a flash her fingers darted into the pocket and retrieved the offending piece of paper (as she had suspected! a love-letter!) before Joan had time to retreat. The ensuing scene, the shrieking and hysterics and stamping of feet, even reached Walter who was upstairs in his dressing-room at the time, brooding on business matters. He gave the storm a little time to blow over but it showed no sign of doing so and at last he was obliged to come downstairs, afraid that they might burst blood-vessels in their pa.s.sion. His appearance quelled mother and daughter instantly: they gazed at him gla.s.sily, b.r.e.a.s.t.s still heaving, faces tear-stained. He promptly sent Joan to her room and, when she had gone, reminded his wife that she was under instructions to take these matters calmly.

'The fact is, my dear, that these emotional scenes do no good at all. Quite the reverse. I should like to know how much you have found out about this young man as a result of all this shouting and screaming? My bet is ... nothing.'

It was true. Mrs Blackett hung her head. Joan had declared that she would rather be dead than reveal the least thing about him, where she had met him, where he worked, even what his name was. 'His name appears to be "Barry",' said Walter with a sigh, perusing the letter, 'and I can even tell you where he works, since he has written on his firm's notepaper. As to where she met him, that is of no importance whatsoever. So all you have succeeded in doing is putting Joan's back up. In future kindly consult me before you say anything to Joan about her boyfriends. I shall now go and have a word with the young lady.'

Walter climbed the stairs thoughtfully. The marriage of his daughters was a matter to which he had not yet given a great deal of attention. And yet it was undoubtedly a matter of great importance, not only to Joan, as it would be, in due course, to little Kate, his younger daughter, but potentially to the business as well. After all, if you are a wealthy man you cannot have your daughter marrying the first adventurer who comes along. To allow such a match is to invite disaster. The fact was that Joan would do far better for herself and for Blackett and Webb Limited if she agreed to marry someone whose position in the Colony matched her own.

There were, as it happened, two or three young men in Singapore with whom a satisfactory alliance of this sort could have been made and who, given Joan's attractions, would have asked for nothing better. But when, on her return from her finishing school, such a union had been suggested to her, Joan had been indignant. She found the idea distasteful and old-fashioned. She would marry whom she pleased. Naturally the elder Blacketts in turn had been indignant. Walter had demanded to know why he had paid good money to such a school if not to drill some sense of reality into her. But Joan had been stubborn and Walter had quickly reached the conclusion that patience was the best policy. They would wait and see, tactfully fending off unsuitable young men in the meantime. Despite the scene which had just taken place Walter remained confident that Joan was too sensible a girl to remain permanently attached to someone whom her parents considered unsuitable.

Walter, climbing the stairs, had considered rebuking his daughter and ordering her not to communicate with this young man again. Instead he decided to continue banking on her good sense and merely said: 'Joan dear, I've no objection to you flirting with young men provided you are sensible about it and don't do anything you might regret later. What I do object to is the fact that you have upset your mother. In future please be more discreet and hide your love-letters in some safe place.' Joan, who had been expecting another row, gazed at him in astonishment as he handed her back the letter which had caused all the commotion.

Was Walter taking a great risk with his daughter's future by responding so mildly? Mrs Blackett was inclined to think that he was. Walter, however, rea.s.sured her. He was on friendly terms with the chairman of the firm on whose notepaper the young man wrote his love-letters and saw him frequently at the Club. He was confident that if the worst came to the worst and Joan persisted in taking an interest in him, it would require only a nod and a wink to have the fellow moved away from Singapore to a convenient distance (back to England if necessary). As it turned out, this intervention was not necessary: at a certain age nothing can be more stifling to enthusiasm than the permission or approval of your parents. 'Barry', (whoever he was), lovelorn, was allowed to continue his residence in Singapore.

Mrs Blackett now decided that the best way to prevent Joan from carrying on with unsuitable young men was to surround her with suitable ones. True, there was a serious shortage of the latter in Singapore but she would draw up a list and see what could be done ... Joan's trouble was that she never met anyone of the right sort. Mrs Blackett would put an end to that by inviting one or two young men chosen by herself to tea once a week. Joan would be asked to act as hostess and Walter would be there, too, to keep an eye on things. What did Walter think of it? Was it not a good idea?

Walter was dubious. He doubted whether Joan would take an interest in any young chap of whom her mother approved. He was even more dubious when he saw the list that she had drawn up. But in the end he agreed, partly because he saw no reason why his wife should not have her own way for once, partly because he had a secret weakness. This weakness, which was so mild and agreeable it might almost be considered a virtue, was for holding forth, as a man with some experience of life, to younger men just starting out. So it would happen, once these weekly tea-parties were inaugurated, that while Joan sat tight-lipped and rebellious, her green eyes as hard as pebbles, Walter would grow animated and have a jolly good time. Mrs Blackett, meanwhile, would dart glances from her husband to her daughter to the young guest trying to estimate what impression each was making on the other. As a matter of fact, the young man usually sat there looking faintly alarmed as Walter harangued him: after all, this was Blackett of Blackett and Webb, an important man in the Straits, and his parents had told him to be careful not to put his foot in it and to behave himself properly for once.

For a number of years now it had been Walter's agreeable habit to take his visitors by the arm and escort them along the row of paintings that hung in his drawing-room. So it happened that the young man intended for Joan, although on the whole he felt safer sitting down and less likely to knock something over, would reluctantly allow himself to be plucked out of his chair while Joan continued to sit mutinously silent beside the tea-pot, ignoring her mother's whispered entreaties that she should say something to her guest, and even accompany the two men across the room.

Some of the paintings which Walter was showing the young man were primitive in style, painted perhaps by a native artist or by a gifted ship's officer in his spare time: here was a three-masted vessel being loaded with spices or sugar, a line of native porters with bundles on their heads marching in uncertain perspective along a rickety quay surrounded by jungle. In the next painting, by a more sophisticated hand, the ship had arrived in Liverpool and was being unloaded again, and after that would come three or four paintings of the port of Rangoon and Walter would exclaim: 'Look! They're loading rice. Still all sailing ships, of course, and Rangoon's just a sleepy little village. But you wait!'

In the early days, he would explain, while the youth at his side gazed at him uneasily, white rice would not survive the long pa.s.sage round the Cape and so it was shipped as what was known as 'cargo rice', that is, one-fifth unhusked paddy and four-fifths roughly cleaned in hand-mills. Throughout the East, to India mainly, it was shipped simply as paddy (The blighters cleaned it themselves.'). Now Walter, unreeling history at a prodigious speed, would guide his guest (well, Joan's guest) to a later picture of Rangoon. 'You see how it's grown in the meantime. And see how steam has taken the place of sail in the harbour (though some ships still have both, of course). And these great buildings with chimneys, d'you know what they are? Steam rice-mills!'

For now it was possible, with the opening of the Suez Ca.n.a.l in 1870, to ship cleaned rice to Europe, thereby cutting out the fine-millers who used to clean the 'cargo rice' in London.

'Ruined 'em,' Walter would remark with a frown. 'They weren't quick enough. A businessman must keep his wits about him.' And if the young man happened to be starting out on a business career himself, as he probably was, Walter might pause to lecture him on how you must always be ready to move with the times, never taking anything for granted.

'Go and join them!' hissed Mrs Blackett to her daughter in a penetrating whisper. 'You're being impolite to your guest.'

'But Mother, I've told you a thousand times ...' And it was true ... she had.

The last picture of Rangoon had been painted after the turn of the century and showed how the thriving rice trade had caused it to spread and grow into a great modern city, now only surpa.s.sed as an Eastern port by Calcutta and Bombay. Walter would draw his dismayed captive closer and after a moment's examination of the teeming wharves on the Rangoon River he would put his finger on a fine warehouse and say. 'Our first! The first to belong to Blackett and Webb ... or rather, to Webb and Company as the firm was then called. We still have another exactly similar here in Singapore on the river. Well now, you see how a bit of trade can make a place grow?' And with an air of satisfaction he would lead the suitable young man on to yet more paintings of Calcutta, Penang, Malacca, and of Singapore itself, in various stages of development.

'You see how we made these little villages grow in just a few years. That's what a bit of tin and rubber have done for Singapore!'

There was still another painting to be seen, and one that was more important than all the others, but by now Mrs Blackett was growing impatient and calling Walter and his audience back for another cup of tea. These tea-parties, she was beginning to think, were not having the desired effect. A disturbing thought occurred to her and she eyed her daughter suspiciously. Could it be that the reason for Joan's lack of interest in her guest was that she was already carrying on in secret with yet another unsuitable young man?

3.

Walter, after one such occasion, found himself left alone to brood in the drawing-room while Joan, with a sudden friendliness born of relief, conducted her guest to his motor-car and then went to join little Kate who was waiting on the lawn with a warped tennis racket for a game of French cricket. Joan was still just enough of a schoolgirl to enjoy such games. As the young man's limousine crept towards the gates his pale face appeared at one of the windows and he waved, but no one was paying any attention to his departure. He caught a glimpse of Joan, though, dashing joyfully after a tennis ball while Kate clumsily pa.s.sed the racket round and round her plump little body, and he thought with a pang: 'What a smasher!' And rather well off, too. For once he and his parents were entirely in agreement. Too bad old Blackett was so peculiar!

Meanwhile, Mrs Blackett had seized the opportunity of slipping upstairs to Joan's room in order to set her mind at rest by having a quick read of her daughter's diary. She picked up this little volume and began to flick over its pages. So far, so good. There did not appear to be anything incriminating. She heaved a sigh of relief as the weeks fled by under her thumbnail. But then, just as she had almost reached this very week, she received a nasty shock, for the diary suddenly turned from plain English into a jumble of meaningless letters. What on earth did this signify? It could only be that Joan had taken to writing her diary in code! And that in turn must mean that she had something to hide! Mrs Blackett, seriously alarmed, tried again and again to make sense of those jumbled letters but was quite unable to make anything of them. The only thing that she did discover was that the same name (she a.s.sumed it was a name because it began with a capital letter) kept recurring: 'Solrac'!

'Oh dear, he must be a Hungarian this time!' thought Mrs Blackett, raising a hand to her brow.

Downstairs she found Walter still in the drawing-room, musing in front of the most important painting in his collection, the one which he had not had time to show Joan's young guest. He merely greeted her revelations about the diary in code with a shrug, however, and told her to calm herself ... any family with growing daughters must expect occasional difficulties of this sort. It was in the nature of things. Mrs Blackett retired, by no means rea.s.sured.

The painting which had pride of place in Walter's vast drawing-room and in front of which he was now standing, was not yet another view of an embryonic city, but of a man. It was a portrait of old Mr Webb himself, a bearded, sharp-featured gentleman of great dignity. Walter, when given the opportunity, would lead his guests up to this portrait and speak with respectful warmth of his former partner, the man without whom he himself 'would never have amounted to anything'. For it had been Mr Webb who had given young Walter Blackett a chance to compete with the giant firms of the Far East like Guthries, Jardines and Sime Darby, by agreeing to merge his own powerful business with Walter's fledgling. And they had got on well together, too, so that in no time a real understanding had been established between them. Besides, growing older now, Mr Webb had needed the energy of a younger partner. In due course Blackett and Webb Limited had been the result.

A lesser man, as he grew weaker, would have held grimly on to everything, with the result that within a few years both the rubber and the agency business would have tumbled about his ears. But old Mr Webb, never afraid to face unpleasant realities, had realized that the years ahead would be too much for him. Perhaps, too, he had dimly perceived some of the approaching hazards of the next decade: in particular, the growing rivalry with j.a.pan in the markets of the Far East. There are few things in life more difficult than for a man to retire from the business he has founded and built up himself. Yet this difficult feat had been managed, at least reasonably well, by Mr Webb when Walter had taken over completely in 1930. And there had still remained a firm bond of mutual respect between the two men.

After his retirement Mr Webb's main interest had been in a small estate business known as the Mayfair Rubber Company which he had kept back, he would explain, as an old man's plaything. He was chairman of this company but his duties were not onerous: the Mayfair was one of the a.s.sortment of independent companies whose day-to-day management was handled collectively by Blackett and Webb with an efficiency that neither of them, alone, could have matched. No, it was more likely, if the truth were known, that he had seen the Mayfair as a convenient Old Gentleman's Home. From this point of view there was something to be said for the Mayfair, however slender the yield from its estate in Joh.o.r.e.

When he retires an elderly gentleman needs a pleasant place to live: the Mayfair had maintained its Singapore headquarters for many years back, not in the commercial district as you might expect, but in a rambling, palatial bungalow in Tanglin, adjacent to Walter's own splendid mansion so that only a pleasant stroll through two compounds separated them. A retired gentleman needs the respect and a.s.sistance of those around him ... who is more respected and a.s.sisted than a chairman in his own company? He needs something to keep him interested in life lest he slip out of it through the inattention that besieges the elderly ... what better than his own rubber company? On the other hand, he needs to be left alone, not bothered by people, because they increasingly irritate him ... whose peace of mind is more carefully preserved than the chairman's? This last point had been particularly important to old Mr Webb.

He had lived alone all his life and did not mean to change his ways simply because he was getting on in years. Surprisingly, he was married. But his wife was in England and always had been. He had married her late in life and never encouraged her to come out to Malaya. Perhaps he had been afraid that people would laugh at him, for she was some thirty years younger than himself (she was dead now, though: he had outlasted her despite those thirty years). More likely, he had simply preferred living by himself and his wife had not seemed to mind, as far as anyone knew. Moreover, he had paid visits to her in England where he was sometimes obliged to go on business. On one of these visits he had even made her pregnant, which speaks for cordial relations. The result of their union had been a son called Matthew who, like his mother, had never appeared in Singapore.

At one time Mr Webb had had the notion that young Matthew should marry Joan. Yes, the old chap had taken a benevolent interest in her as a little girl, showering her with silver spoons, napkin rings and strings of pearls. No doubt Mr Webb, used to his own somewhat despotic family arrangements, had seen no reason why authority should not be exercised to merge families in the same way as businesses. Walter smiled. That might have saved all this bother with unsuitable young men! But by the mid-thirties this union was no longer mentioned, nor had been for some years.

Matthew and Joan ... they might almost had been designed for each other. What a shame! As it happened, neither Walter nor the rest of his family, except for his younger daughter, Kate, had set eyes on Matthew although they, too, had made occasional visits to England. Matthew and Walter's son, Monty, were roughly the same age, yet when Monty had been at school in England Matthew had not joined him ... he had been sent to school in Switzerland, or in Sweden, or in some other country. For, Walter recalled, gazing sadly at the portrait of his former partner, in the smooth and otherwise flawless edifice which Mr Webb had constructed around himself in preparation for a dignified and comfortable old age, a single nasty crack had appeared.

Old Mr Webb, although his faculties had remained unimpaired in most respects, had been a.s.sailed by certain progressive ideas about diet and education and Matthew had been brought up in accordance with them. This was surely a tragedy worthy of that... what was his name? ... that French blighter ... yes, Balzac, that was it. The most progressive of all the schools Matthew had been sent to, so Walter had heard, had taken co-education to the limit of allowing no distinction whatsoever to be made between the s.e.xes. Children were known simply by the t.i.tle 'Citizen' and a surname. Boys and girls alike wore the same baggy, flowing pantaloons and bullfighter jackets. They swam naked together in the swimming pool, had their hair cropped to a similar length, played the same noncompet.i.tive games, and were allowed to unroll their sleeping mats in whichever dormitory they pleased provided it was not in the same one two nights running.

This was undoubtedly the most extreme of several private schools which Matthew had attended. The others had probably specialized in nothing more extreme than vegetarianism and some form of non-coercive teaching. Yet the thought of these schools still haunted Walter to this day. He had done his best to remonstrate, mind you, but the old man was obstinate and had shown himself ready to take offence. The matter had had to be dropped. But what all these schools had done to young Matthew, Walter could only wonder. It seemed to him pathetic beyond words that this old gentleman, whose own life had been an example of rect.i.tude, hard work and self-discipline, should have succ.u.mbed to such an array of peculiar and debilitating theories, the very opposite of everything that he himself had stood for.

Only too glad would Walter have been if events had proved him wrong, if the fatal vegetarian flaw had not brought about the tragedy he feared. But this was not to be. One of Mr Webb's visits to England had coincided with the General Strike of 1926. Matthew had been a student at Oxford at the time. While his fellow undergraduates had poured cheerfully out of their colleges to lend a hand in breaking the strike Matthew had skulked in his room 'sporting his oak' (Walter understood this to be university jargon for 'keeping his door shut'). Despite the shut door Mr Webb had argued with his son. Very likely the word 'patriotism' had been mentioned.

Walter had received no first-hand account of the meeting but somehow he pictured Mr Webb standing on the lawn of Brasenose College holding up fistfuls of white hair to the icy wind that howled through the quad, while dismal dons, looking up from their books, surveyed this representative of suffering humanity with distaste from leaded cas.e.m.e.nts. He understood that after wandering about for a day or two the old chap had offered his own services as a tram-conductor. They had been refused, of course. No matter how enthusiastic he might be, for the serious business of collecting fares and clubbing trouble-makers off the rear platform he was much too frail. He had retired to Singapore then, having watched the strike collapse without his son's a.s.sistance.

At one time it had been understood that Matthew would take his place in the firm one day. But after 1926 this was no longer discussed. Matthew's mother had died suddenly in 1930 and Matthew himself had seldom been mentioned after that. He was known to be living in Geneva where he had some job connected with the League of Nations. And that, reflected Walter, given the poor boy's peculiar education, is about what one might have expected! Old Mr Webb was still alive, by the way, and on certain social occasions he could still be seen in Walter's garden or drawing-room, looking no less upright and dignified than the old gentleman in the portrait which Walter had just been contemplating. 'Matthew and Joan ... what a shame indeed. It would have suited the firm nicely.' And with a sigh Walter went to look for his wife who had retired to her room with a pencil and a piece of paper, determined to break the code in which Joan had taken to writing her diary.

Never in her life had Mrs Blackett subjected herself to such mental effort as she did during the next few days in her attempt to make sense of those mysteriously jumbled letters. She tried everything she could think of, she pummelled her brain with one theory after another, she covered the floor of her bedroom with crumpled pieces of paper, she grew thin and haggard, but still without result. At last, however, as she sat defeated in front of her dressing-table gazing at her hollow-eyed reflection and still with a line of Joan's fiendish code gripped in her fingers, chance came to her rescue: she dropped her eyes to the reflection of the paper and found that she could read it without difficulty! It was the simplest of all codes used by children: mirror-writing. She searched feverishly for the other coded sentences she had copied from Joan's diary and held them to the mirror, her lips working ... There was a knock on the door and Walter came in, looking sombre.

'He's not a Hungarian!' cried Mrs Blackett. 'He's a ...'

'A Brazilian, I know. It's even worse.'

'Walter, how do you know?'

'I just asked Joan. What's more, I have a feeling that this time it may be more serious.'

Walter was beginning to think that although difficulties of this sort were in the natural order of things and were such as any family with growing daughters has to expect, a Brazilian was going a tiny bit too far. Weary of his wife's efforts to break Joan's code he had decided to approach his daughter directly. Joan had replied without hesitation that the object of her affections was a secretary at the Brazilian Legation in Peking who had come to visit Singapore for an extended holiday. They would probably be married in a year or two in Rio de Janeiro, once she had had time to become a Catholic. Although his family did not have much money (they were rather hard up, actually), they were direct descendents of King Alfonso or someone of Spain, or was it Portugal? She was glad that Walter had brought the matter up because she had been on the point of asking whether she could invite Carlos to tea. Oh yes, and if Walter did not mind, it might be best not to show him all the paintings of Rangoon, at least to begin with, until they all knew each other better.

This was serious, undoubtedly. But Walter did not lose his nerve. He knew Joan to have an obstinate streak in her and had quickly decided, in spite of the danger, that the best policy would be to continue as before, counting on her good sense. He believed that given time she would perceive that an impoverished Brazilian was out of the question. Still, this talk of marriage was disquieting. He replied guardedly that he saw no reason why Carlos should not come to tea. In return Joan gave him a kiss.

Carlos, it turned out, wore a monocle, affecting to be a British gentleman. Over tea (this time it was Mrs Blackett's turn to remain tight-lipped and sullen) Carlos explained to Walter that in the Brazilian Legation in Peking there had been nothing whatsoever to do ... n.o.body there did any work, not a bit, not an ounce, not a sc.r.a.p! And he uttered a high, bleating laugh, also modelled on that of a British gentleman. One reason n.o.body did any work in Peking was because the Chinese Government was not there, nowhere near! The blessed thing was miles away in Nanking! In any case, the Chinese and Brazilian governments had nothing whatever to say to each other, not a blessed word! No Brazilian had been near China for centuries! So what could a chap do? he enquired, failing to notice the unfortunate impression he was producing on Walter. What could a chap do but spend his entire day in riding-breeches or tennis flannels and his evenings dancing on the roof of the Grand Hotel de Pekin? 'A poor show, actually,' he added regretfully, somewhat to Walter's surprise. After a long silence he dropped his monocle glumly into his handkerchief and began to polish. Walter had agreed with his last remark. He glanced quickly at Joan but her face was impa.s.sive and he could not tell what she was thinking.

Carlos cleared his throat. Sometimes, when they needed a change from Peking, they would go on leave to Shanghai. He brightened a little. Did Walter know that the Lambeth Walk was now all the rage in Shanghai's nightclubs?

Once he had met Carlos, Walter was rea.s.sured. Joan, a sensible girl who knew how important her eventual marriage would be both to herself and to her father's business, could not fail to see how thoroughly impossible he was. Walter was amazed, indeed, that she should have been able to put up with him for a day, let alone a week. But somehow she seemed able to manage it and, presently, the week became several weeks. As time went on, Walter's confidence diminished. He had almost decided to use his parental authority to put a stop to the liaison when he happened to mention the matter to a French friend, a certain Francois Dupigny, who was pa.s.sing through Singapore at the time. Dupigny, to whom he had applied for information about the young man's background in the hope of uncovering something discreditable, exercised some important function in the Indo-Chinese Government on behalf of the French Colonial Ministry; he was unusually well-connected in the Far East and had an ear for gossip.

Although, as it turned out, Dupigny knew nothing at all about Carlos he threw up his hands in dismay at Walter's idea that the two young people should be prevented from seeing each other. On the contrary, he declared, nothing could be worse for Walter's cause! The lovers should be not only permitted but obliged obliged to spend as much time in each other's company as decorum and chast.i.ty allowed. In such circ.u.mstances nothing could be better guaranteed to pour icy water over the pa.s.sion of one young person than intimate acquaintance with the other! to spend as much time in each other's company as decorum and chast.i.ty allowed. In such circ.u.mstances nothing could be better guaranteed to pour icy water over the pa.s.sion of one young person than intimate acquaintance with the other!

Walter was taken aback by this cynical view, though there might be a grain of truth in it, he had to admit. In all probability, however, he would not have adopted such an unconventional approach to his difficulty had not Joan, at that very moment, asked for permission to visit Shanghai for a holiday in the company of Carlos ... and, of course, of her mother who would have to be persuaded to act as chaperon. Joan naturally expected a refusal and, seeing him hesitate, began to show signs of indignation and rebellion. But Walter's hesitation was less concerned with Carlos than with the political situation in Shanghai and in China generally. He recalled the trouble there had been there in 1932, of which he had been given a vivid description by the manager of Blackett and Webb's Shanghai branch. The curious scene which he had evoked had for some reason remained in Walter's mind: a chilly night in January, the booming chimes of the Custom House clock dying away into silence over the rainswept city, and then the sudden rattle of rifle and machine gun fire.

As was usually the case with these China 'incidents' the rights and wrongs of the affair had been thickly cloaked in ambiguity. All that one could say for certain was that soon after eleven p.m. an armed contingent of the j.a.panese Naval Landing Party led by men carrying flaming torches had crossed the border from the International Settlement into Chapei. They had been greeted with a hail of bullets by the bitterly anti-j.a.panese, anti-foreign, pro-revolutionary Nineteenth Route Army: in no time the streets around the North Station had been littered with dead j.a.panese Marines. The j.a.panese had not thought to switch out the streetlights and, with the brilliantly lit International Settlement behind them, had made an easy target for the Chinese in the darkness of Chapei. And since the North Szechuan Road between the Post Office and North Honan Road had remained illuminated and the sound of gunfire could be heard all over the Foreign Concession area, presently taxis and private motor-cars began to arrive loaded with Europeans and Americans in evening-dress who had stopped by on their way from theatres, restaurants and dinner-parties to see the fun. In a few minutes a cheerful, chattering crowd had gathered, champagne was being sipped and neighbouring cafe proprietors had been roused to supply hot coffee and sandwiches. The general view of this good-humoured, after-theatre audience was that the good old j.a.ps were saving Britain, France and America the trouble of teaching the Chinese a lesson. For undoubtedly the Chinese, with their growing 'anti-foreign' and nationalistic feeling, had been getting too big for their boots. Allow them to continue in this direction and it would not be too long before the various commercial and legal privileges enjoyed by the Great Powers in China would be at an end.

Walter, still hesitating, reflected that the 'anti-foreign' feeling in China had not diminished and could still be a source of trouble. On the other hand, it was now mainly concentrated on the j.a.panese, who thus acted as a lightning-conductor for Europeans and Americans. This spring (of 1937) had been relatively quiet, apart from reports of increased j.a.panese troop movements in Manchuria. Besides, the various garrisons of the Foreign Concessions had been greatly strengthened and the Chinese were so busy fighting among themselves that the threat to Shanghai appeared negligible.

'I see no reason why you shouldn't go,' Walter said calmly, 'provided you don't do anything foolish.' And then, though not without misgivings, he settled down to await developments. He was beginning to realize that the marriage of a daughter to the right sort of young man is a matter to which a great deal of attention must be given, whether you like it or not.

4.

'But don't you see, Papa dear,' said Joan, reclining on her bed in her underwear and luxuriating in the draught of the fan directly above her, 'how it could come as a shock to a nicely brought-up girl like me who has always been either at home or at school. It was absolutely absolutely shocking, I mean, and Mama was quite as taken aback as I was, at least she turned as white as milk and I thought she was going to faint. Her eyes got a funny look in them and even Carlos, in his absurd British clothes, looked a bit shaken. Actually, it was a good job Carlos was there because although I don't think he'd seen much of the rougher side of life either, at least his presence was rea.s.suring. He was a shocking, I mean, and Mama was quite as taken aback as I was, at least she turned as white as milk and I thought she was going to faint. Her eyes got a funny look in them and even Carlos, in his absurd British clothes, looked a bit shaken. Actually, it was a good job Carlos was there because although I don't think he'd seen much of the rougher side of life either, at least his presence was rea.s.suring. He was a man man, at any rate, even though I know you think he's a bit ridiculous, and his clothes, a tweed suit I think it was, did tremendously inspire confidence. Anyway, without him and his tweeds and his monocle I'm quite sure that Mama would have fainted and think what problems that might have caused in the middle of I think it was called Hongkew and Mama already complaining that she was worn out because we had spent most of the afternoon trailing around the j.a.panese part looking for this wretched silk shop and being sent on one wild-goose chase after another and it would soon be getting dark and she wanted to get back to Bubbling Well Road where she felt safer and, anyway, I should have felt distinctly uncomfortable, particularly as all the rickshaw coolies vanished the moment they saw there was going to be trouble with j.a.panese soldiers arriving and, trust him! Carlos had told his chauffeur to pick us up not there, but two or three streets away. By the way, have I shown you the remains of my blisters?

'Well, no, Daddy, I agree that nothing did happen ... We weren't actually molested but we easily could have been. It was more the feeling of being, well, vulnerable. One moment we were strolling along peacefully and the next the street was full of cars and lorries and little j.a.p soldiers pouring out ... Well, all right then, I admit there was only one car and no lorry and only three or four soldiers poured out of it, the car, I mean, but still it was quite frightening when they started herding us in to the side of the pavement with their rifle b.u.t.ts and there was an officer who looked like a chimpanzee with a sword several times too long for him which he kept tripping over in the most ludicrous fashion. Until then it seemed at least fairly fairly amusing, though Mama was getting apprehensive and Carlos was looking helpless and saying something like: 'What a to-do!' which frankly wasn't very helpful of him because Mummy and I could think of that much ourselves. Well, we tried to walk on and they wouldn't let us, and then Carlos suddenly stopped saying 'Bless my soul' and began to rattle away in Portuguese and got quite red in the face because he had seen that they'd blocked off the end of the street and he was afraid that he might be involved in heaven knows what, a diplomatic incident perhaps? amusing, though Mama was getting apprehensive and Carlos was looking helpless and saying something like: 'What a to-do!' which frankly wasn't very helpful of him because Mummy and I could think of that much ourselves. Well, we tried to walk on and they wouldn't let us, and then Carlos suddenly stopped saying 'Bless my soul' and began to rattle away in Portuguese and got quite red in the face because he had seen that they'd blocked off the end of the street and he was afraid that he might be involved in heaven knows what, a diplomatic incident perhaps?

'Of course course, there was no reason to be alarmed, I'm not saying there was was! All I'm saying is that it did occur to one that the j.a.p soldiers could turn nasty and their bayonets looked very sharp, even though there were only three or four of them, and in the meantime the street had suddenly filled with people pressing around the doorway that the soldiers had gone into and some of them looked pretty worked up about something, so unlike the Chinese who are usually well-behaved and mind their own business (or at least they do here in Singapore, don't they?) and I'd never realized before how much smaller they are than us, because our three heads were sticking out of the crowd and it felt a bit like Gulliver's Travels Gulliver's Travels or something. or something.

'Anyway, then two j.a.p soldiers came out of the doorway again carrying someone. All I could see at first was the front man who had a very shiny leather boot gripped in the palm of each hand ... I never did see the rest of him properly, I'm glad to say, just a hand trailing along the pavement and then a glimpse of a shape with its tunic and trousers undone and a horrid ma.s.s of red stuff around its middle. He was S-shaped because of the way they were carrying him and he had a sword, too, which sc.r.a.ped tinnily on the ground and kept getting in the way of the man behind who had him by the armpits. But really what gave me such a shock was the Chinese girl they dragged out of the doorway and threw up against the wall ... at least, I thought then that she was Chinese because of her clothes, she was wearing a quilted tunic and black silk trousers and I'd never seen a Eurasian wear anything but European clothes, even though there was something about the colour of her hair which was a very dark red, I naturally thought that she had simply dyed it, which would have been nothing compared to the weird creatures in some of the nightclubs which Carlos had persuaded us to go to the night before. The point is that she looked as if she were about my age or even younger, and then she saw me in the crowd and that is what I found so upsetting.

'Well, it's not my fault that I've led such a sheltered life, is it? I suddenly thought that if I hadn't been English it could have been me me up against that wall. The little officer was shouting at her and striking her. Her face had gone grey, I mean up against that wall. The little officer was shouting at her and striking her. Her face had gone grey, I mean literally literally grey, the colour of porridge. It gives you a shock yourself to see someone so frightened. Afterwards I couldn't get it out of my mind. I kept thinking that if she were English she'd have only just left school like me. grey, the colour of porridge. It gives you a shock yourself to see someone so frightened. Afterwards I couldn't get it out of my mind. I kept thinking that if she were English she'd have only just left school like me.

'I don't know where everybody came from but by that time the street was full of people cl.u.s.tered in a very tight semicircle around the j.a.panese officer and the girl and the other two soldiers who had carried the dead man out of the house were having trouble getting through the crowd again to reach them. And suddenly ... he was so busy screaming at the girl and slapping her face that he hadn't noticed the crowd behind him ... suddenly, they pressed forward and swallowed him and the girl up completely. There was some shoving and kicking and I think he tried to draw his sword but he was so tightly packed in with everyone else that of course he couldn't do anything. And at that moment Carlos said: "Now's our chance to beetle off" because the j.a.panese soldiers who had gone to the end of the street to stop people leaving were coming running back to rescue their officer, and between us Carlos and I managed to drag Mama around the corner and then he went off to find the car, and in no time we were drinking a much-needed cup of tea at the Park Hotel, all back safe and sound on Bubbling Well Road.

'Well, that was that, and even Mama gradually came to see that she had had a little adventure and felt quite pleased with herself, especially when Carlos got hold of a newspaper which said that the officer had been lured into that house by a girl and then murdered by Communists. It didn't say anything about what happened to the girl. Anyway, as I say, that was that and the holiday continued as before with sight-seeing and shopping et cetera and we went to the Moscowa nightclub which was full of the most divinely beautiful Russian girls, all aristocrats, Carlos said, I felt so jealous of them and ... thank you, Daddy dear, but I know very well that I don't though I wish I did, it must be nice ... and so on and then, then it was time to go on board again to come back to dear old Singapore and Mama had to make a fuss about the way her maid was doing the packing, just rolling things up and cramming them into our trunks and, as you know, Mama has only to set eyes eyes on a boat to get sea-sick, and so it was really lucky that Carlo was there, even though he was beginning to get on our nerves a bit and we'd privately christened him "The Stage Butler" because he was always so polite and pompous, because otherwise I'd have had to mope about by myself, what with Mama groaning and swallowing tablets in her cabin and all. on a boat to get sea-sick, and so it was really lucky that Carlo was there, even though he was beginning to get on our nerves a bit and we'd privately christened him "The Stage Butler" because he was always so polite and pompous, because otherwise I'd have had to mope about by myself, what with Mama groaning and swallowing tablets in her cabin and all.

'Well, we had lots of lovely dances and games on deck and simply enormous meals and one evening with some other young people we'd met we all got a bit tipsy and decided we'd have an adventure and explore the ship and prowl around in the cabin cla.s.s and the third-cla.s.s parts of the boat where one wasn't normally supposed to go. So we set off in a horde, the men in dinner-jackets smoking cigars and us girls in our most gorgeous evening dresses, giggling with champagne and silly jokes and some of the men were even wearing funny hats. Straight away we ran into a hitch. A locked door. Steward won't let us through. "I say, Carlos," said one of the men, "why don't you bribe the fearful little fellow while we look the other way," and we all whooped and shoved Carlos forward and being a Brazilian, of course, he was frightfully good at bribing people and in no time we were pouring through into the other cla.s.ses.

'Actually, it was then that we began to realize that it was probably rather a boring idea after all to go prowling about in the other cla.s.ses ... There was really nothing much to do do! And one of the men who was in the Diplomatic ... He told me his name was Sinclair Sinclair (he had a stammer and he always said it twice and I never found out whether it was really that or whether he was just repeating one of his names) and had been to Harrow and was a great sport and was something like the millionth secretary in Bangkok or somewhere ... he said : "I say, I don't know what you people think b-b-but it seems to me that the other cluh-cluh-cluh ... parts of the ship are just a tiny bit disappointing, if you get m'meaning," and he did rather say what was in everyone's mind. And someone else said: "I mean to say, it's ever so slightly dingy dingy, which is not to say that it's not frightfully jolly in its way, and all that.'