The box of tacks was a large one and the yogi seemed to be in no hurry, as if anxious to savour each one. Presently the guests began to exchange glances, as if to say that it was dreadfully hot out here and would this go on much longer? Certain of the men, particularly those who considered their time valuable, glanced at their watches with a preoccupied air; one of them, whom Walter recognized as an influential executive of one of the big tyre companies in Singapore, even turned away from the balustrade altogether.
‘Yes,’ agreed Walter, swiftly taking him by the arm and compelling him to saunter up and down along the same path which he himself had been pacing earlier in the day, ‘it’s bound to come as a shock to those who, like you and I, knew him as a younger man. But then, at his time of life …’ Walter shrugged sadly.
‘Some time may elapse, I’m afraid, before we see his like again,’ declared the man from the tyre company with an air of rather sepulchral piety, but again sneaking a look at his watch.
They began to discuss, in a desultory fashion while the yogi went on stolidly swallowing tacks, the mysterious latex-drinking snails which were said to have appeared on certain isolated estates. Neither of them was inclined to take these snails very seriously. ‘Still,’ said Walter, ‘we’d better not let Mincing Lane get to hear of them or they’ll be using the wretched creatures to fuel another round of speculation.’ He paused sombrely, having reminded himself of the results of the last speculative boom. These speculators were playing the game of those who, like the Communists, wanted to foment trouble in the Colony. What a lot of strikes Singapore had seen this year already! The Harbour Board dockers had been on strike for three months … at a time when shipment of rubber and tin was vital, not only for profits but for the War Effort as well. Hardly had that collapsed when, amid violent riots, another one had started at the Firestone factory and then trouble had spread all over the place with rubber immobilized everywhere, a disastrous pile-up of fruit at the height of the season caused by a go-slow of pineapple cutters at the canning factories, and to cap it all, pitched battles between police trying to arrest trouble-makers at the Tai Thong factory and the labour force armed with staves, stones and soda-water bottles.
Walter, despite those heads of cake, began to suffer misgivings about the loyalty of his workers. What if the Blackett and Webb jubilee should be chosen for propaganda purposes not only by the Government to demonstrate ‘Continuity in Prosperity’ under British rule, but also by the Communists to demonstrate the exploitation and disaffection of the workers! The thought of a jubilee procession up the hill to Government House in the teeth of a howling mob was alarming. How the Langfields would laugh!
‘Where are they taking Margaret?’ demanded Walter’s companion suddenly, for the yogi’s Eurasian assistant, gold teeth gleaming, had selected his wife from the little herd of guests and with much polishing of hands was leading her down the steps to where the yogi, his meal of tin-tacks finished, was waiting glumly on the platform. Half-way down the steps she baulked and would have returned had not Monty come hurrying down to reassure her. The bristles on Walter’s spine began to stir beneath his dress shirt.
All the lady was required for, explained the Eurasian in an ingratiating tone, was to inspect the mouth of the yogi. The yogi, recognizing the signal, opened his mouth wide. The Eurasian promptly grasped the lady’s shrinking fingers and stuffed them into the yogi’s open mouth. She snatched them out again quickly. No tin-tacks had been discovered. Monty, beside himself with delight, beamed up at the balustrade. In the strong lights he looked wilder than ever.
Meanwhile, the yogi, his appetite returning, had bitten the handle off the tea-cup which had been passed round for inspection earlier and was crunching it noisily between his teeth. When he had devoured the handle he smashed the rest of the cup by rapping it sharply against his own skull, then popped the broken pieces of china into his mouth, crunching them up too. Monty was invited this time to inspect his mouth and was soon able to confirm that the cup had been eaten up entirely. A slight delay followed while the yogi and his assistant peered at something in a cardboard box full of straw, evidently trying to decide how best to deal with it. Walter leaned over the balustrade and beckoned to Monty impatiently.
‘Just a moment, Father.’
The yogi dipped his hand quickly into the box and withdrew a thrashing, apple-green snake, holding it up by the tail as it twisted this way and that trying to bite him. He quickly slid his other hand down the body and gripped the reptile firmly behind its head. The assistant began to hammer with his palms on a grimy drum. The guests gazed down at him apprehensively from the balustrade, afraid that something disagreeable might be about to happen. The yogi had opened his mouth and was slowly bringing the snake’s head towards it while the rest of its body continued to thrash and flail against his wrists and forearms. ‘Oh no!’ cried one of the ladies in dismay. Hissing, the snake’s head came nearer and nearer the yogi’s mouth, its tongue flickering. Abruptly the yogi took the snake into his mouth and bit off its head. There was an audible cracking of bone, a working of the yogi’s jaws as he masticated and swallowed it. Then the tip of a pink tongue appeared and licked a few scarlet drops from his lips. Walter stared down at the headless body of the snake which continued to thrash by itself on the platform, smearing glistening red marks on the pale wood which, just for a moment, seemed to resemble Chinese ideographs, as if the snake were trying to make some last furious communication. One or two of the ladies had turned pale and even Walter himself was shaken. He announced loudly: ‘If you would like to move inside, coffee and brandy will be served in the drawing-room where it’s cooler.’
‘But Father, he hasn’t finished yet!’ exclaimed Monty, dashing up the steps again as Walter began shepherding the guests back into the house. ‘He drinks nitric acid. It’s amazing. I’ve seen him do it. He dissolves a copper penny in it first and then he just swigs it! And he’s going to walk barefoot through that bonfire before he drinks the acid … Look, I mean … since we’ve got the blighter here!’
Walter stared at his son for a moment, tight-lipped. Then he turned and strode back into the house. Presently, the yogi, left to his own devices, took off his sandals and began to trudge barefoot back and forth through the glowing embers of the bonfire while, at a little distance, his assistant discussed money matters with Monty in a high-pitched voice.
10
Another hour elapsed before Walter had said goodbye to the last of the guests, some of whom had a stricken look. One of the ladies, so Abdul informed him, had been overcome by nausea and had been obliged to lie down: it was that ghastly business with the snake that had done it. He must remember to write a note of apology in the morning. He must also give Monty a dressing-down but that too would have to wait until morning for Monty had prudently disappeared.
Walter climbed the stairs wearily. It was some time since he had given his wife a thought and now he remembered that she had retired with a headache and was doubtless upset by the outcome of the garden-party. Could it still be the same day? That garden-party now seemed to have taken place weeks ago. He found her awake, lying as if stunned against a mound of pillows. She said she was feeling a little better and asked him where everyone was, it seemed very quiet.
‘Search me. The only person who seems to be still here is young Ehrendorf. He’s in the sitting-room smoking cigarettes. As for the others …’ Walter shrugged. All the guests had gone. Monty had gone. Joan had gone. The yogi had gone, full of china.
‘You mean, full of china tea?’
‘No, not really, no, I don’t,’ replied Walter in an edgy sort of tone.
Mrs Blackett sighed but felt too weak to pursue the matter.
‘Well, I suppose I should go to the hospital to see how old Webb is getting on.’
Downstairs, Walter found that there was another guest who had not yet departed though now, daunted by the empty echoing rooms, he seemed to be in the process of doing so: this was Dr Brownley, their family doctor. Dr Bro
wnley frequently visited the Blacketts, but more often for social than for professional reasons. Indeed, he was always invited to the Blacketts’ parties, always came, was always the first to arrive and usually the last to leave. The Doctor, however, was troubled by the knowledge that he was always going to the Blacketts’ but never invited them back! Someone less addicted than the Doctor to the grand social occasions in which the Blacketts specialized, where inevitably one found oneself cheek by jowl with the people who mattered in the Straits, might have preferred to soothe his inflamed conscience, or at least to limit the spread of further inflammation, by not accepting any more invitations. Such a remedy, alas, was out of reach of the good Doctor. Though his inflammation throbbed more painfully on each new occasion he simply could not but accept. Now, at the sight of Walter on the stairs he winced visibly, thinking: ‘This makes it twelve times in a row and they haven’t once been invited to my house!’ He had been hoping to slip out of the house while no one was about, thus avoiding the awkwardness of a leave-taking. Indeed, the reason Walter had not seen him earlier was that the Doctor had dodged behind a bookcase to avoid detection. But this time there was no escape and he called out heartily: ‘Ah, there you are, Walter. I was looking for you to thank you and, of course, Mrs Blackett for a delightful … mind you, one of many such … I’m just off now. Must be going. Look here, you must come to my place one of these days…Can I give you a lift? No, of course, this is where you live, isn’t it? Ha, ha, well, hm … You must come to …’ His voice trailed off into a mutter as he prepared to plunge into the friendly darkness outside. Issuing invitations, the Doctor had found, provided a little welcome relief in awkward situations like this … but you felt correspondingly worse later when faced with the prospect of redeeming them!
‘What’s that?’ demanded Walter, puzzled by the Doctor’s habit of muttering to himself before departure. The Doctor flinched. ‘I was just saying that you must come to my place one of these days,’ he was obliged to state in a clear and unequivocal tone.
‘Oh, all right. Why not?’ said Walter. ‘Good night, Doctor.’ And with that he returned to the drawing-room.
Walter, who had a horror of hospitals, had been contemplating a quiet stengah before paying a visit to old Mr Webb. He had forgotten that young Ehrendorf was still there and was not altogether pleased to find the room full of cigarette smoke. ‘These days you really have to winkle out your guests one by one,’ he thought as Ehrendorf stood up politely, trailing a newspaper from his fingers. However, on the whole he had a good opinion of Ehrendorf and even felt, as one male to another, some sympathy for him in his predicament with Joan. But there it was, women were peculiar and there was not very much one could do about it. If some woman had thrown wine in Walter’s face as a young man he would have fetched her a clout. Ah, but then he had never pretended to have the exquisite manners of an Ehrendorf and could very well see that, equipped with polished manners, one could not go about clouting women at garden-parties.
‘You haven’t seen Joan, have you?’ Ehrendorf enquired, resuming his seat but sitting, Walter was glad to perceive, on the edge of his chair as if ready to stand again.
‘Not for some time. I have an idea that she may have gone out for the evening.’
‘Well, in that case it seems,’ said Ehrendorf with a rather strained smile, ‘that I’ve been stood up. Well, never mind, it’s not for the first time. I’ll just finish my drink if you don’t mind and then I’ll be on my way.’
‘No hurry.’
Walter called for his stengah and sank back in his chair, glad enough after all to have Ehrendorf’s company and to delay his visit to the hospital for a little while. Walter did not greatly care for Americans these days: the acrimony aroused over the Rubber Restriction scheme and the subsequent counter-attack by the American consumers had left its mark. But when one day Captain Ehrendorf, posted to the US military attache’s office in Singapore and armed with an introduction to the Blacketts, had presented himself at their house, neither Walter nor the rest of his family had been able to find fault with him. This had been partly because his introduction had come from none other than Matthew Webb and the Blacketts were curious to learn more about Matthew and the way he lived (incidentally, he must soon do something about sending the poor boy a telegram about his father’s illness), but most of all because Ehrendorf himself was unusually charming and good-looking. He might, indeed, have been specially constructed to topple all Walter’s prejudices about Americans.
Americans, thought Walter, are vulgar: but no one had better taste than Ehrendorf. They are loud: no one more soft-spoken. They have no culture: Walter had yet to meet anyone more cultured, better educated, better mannered, more tactful and well-informed. The fellow, amazing though it might seem to Walter’s jaundiced eye, was quite simply a gentleman. Walter had found it hard to think of him as an American at all. Why, he even spoke English like a civilized person.
Ehrendorf had wasted no time in telling the Blacketts what he knew of Matthew, whom he had first met at Oxford. He himself had been a Rhodes scholar at the university (here he paused for a moment but the Blacketts had stared at him blankly) for a couple of years. Then, five or six years later, they had bumped into each other again, this time in Geneva in 1932 where he himself had been posted as a very junior military assistant to Mr Norman Davis in the long, tortuous and exhausting discussions on the Disarmament Conference. Matthew had not been working for the League Secretariat itself but for some other organization whose name escaped him, connected with it in some way. There were so many! Was it the International Peace Bureau, or the Red Cross Committee? Was it the Permanent Secretariat for War Veterans and War Victims? Or the Union for the Assistance of Calamity-Stricken Populations? Of one thing he was pretty sure, he laughed: it was not the International Humanitarian Bureau for Lovers of Animals, whose rather odd programme was ‘to extend to the animal kingdom the sentiments and duties of humane justice’. He had a suspicion that it might well have been the International League for the Protection of Native Peoples; that was certainly the field he was interested in, anyway. But no matter! How glad they had been to meet each other again!
Geneva in winter was the most depressing town on earth, the international community was cliquish and segregated grimly by nationalities, the Genevese burgher himself was the most narrow and xenophobic animal on two legs. He and Matthew, whom he considered ‘the most wonderful person in the world’ and ‘a wonderful human being’ (young Kate tittered when he said this and clasped a hand over her mouth), casting aside the depressing and Jesuitical, even Jansenist, shackles of Disarmament had resumed their own much more interesting discussions on art, sex, Freud, the existence or otherwise of God, chattering away, as young men will, he added with a smile, about the causes of the Thirty Years War and whether the Defenestration of Prague was instrumental in the downfall of the Palatinate and of the Bohemian church, and countless other matters of this kind which they had been unable to settle to their own satisfaction during the time they had spent together at Oxford. Matthew, ‘a very delightful person’, had been the ideal companion in this dull and provincial Swiss town. They had even managed to make a quick trip to London that winter to see Gielgud’s production of Rodney Ackland’s magnificent play, Strange Orchestra at the St Martin’s Theatre. Then, alas, all too soon, the call of their respective duties had caused their paths to diverge once more. In the years that followed they had only managed to meet again once or twice, for a hurried meal in the nearest restaurant to this or that railway station in some European city where the threads which each was unreeling behind him on his way through Life’s maze had happened briefly to intersect. But they had at least kept in touch by letter, just about.
Walter was sufficiently accustomed to American hyperbole to realize that Ehrendorf might not literally consider Matthew to be ‘the most wonderful person in the world’. Americans, he knew, were inclined to use such expressions about any acquaintance they found moderately inoffensive. Still, it was e
ncouraging. The poor boy’s bizarre education might not have completely ruined him, after all. Mrs Blackett had reacted more cautiously: gossiping about the Defenestration of Prague, whatever that was, did not seem to her such a good sign. As for Ehrendorf, he really was delightful. The Blacketts were charmed by him. Not even young Kate, who was passing then through a stage when she detested all men, could quite resist him.
Ehrendorf had become a frequent visitor at the Blacketts’ house and he would call without performing any of the preliminary social manoeuvres which were still customary among the older Singapore families. Instead of making use of the box fitted to the gate with a tiny slit for visiting cards, and then retiring, as the ritual required, to wait for an invitation, he would have his staff car drive him boldly up to the front door and wander in unannounced. He never stayed for long, though. He was always on his way somewhere…to Government House, perhaps; the Blacketts would not have been surprised to learn, such was Ehrendorf’s disarming ease of manner, that he wandered in on the Governor and Lady Thomas as casually as he did on them, and he was certainly on friendly terms with the Governor’s ADC and staff (‘the servants’ hall’ as it was known at Government House) … or to a reception at some legation, or further afield, to a conference in Manila, or Saigon, or Batavia. Sometimes, if he were going to a party nearby and Joan was at a loose end, he would courteously invite her to join him and together they would be whisked away in the staff car to some elaborate reception or beach party. It was clear, of course, that Ehrendorf, despite his accomplishment, was a long way from being an ideal, or even a possible, suitor for Joan. But his manifest good-nature inhibited the elder Blacketts from objecting for a time to the attentions that he was paying to their daughter and, in any case, it very soon became clear to Walter that no objections were likely to be needed. Her delicate appearance notwithstanding, Joan’s tender womanhood was clad in a tough hide. The distressing day which this young man seated opposite him had evidently just experienced would have been further proof of it, if he had needed proof.
The Empire Trilogy Page 93