The Empire Trilogy

by J. G. Farrell

  As it turned out, although it was evening before Walter had at last finished sending cables and reached the Mayfair, there had been no particular need to hurry: his old friend and partner still had not succumbed. Nor, for that matter, did there appear to have been any great change in his condition. Mr Webb still lay there, breathing noisily in his illuminated tent of white muslin. The Major explained, however, that the old man had gone through a crisis of some sort about mid-day, had appeared restless, and several times had repeated the word ‘sun’ and a number of other words too garbled to be understood, at least by the Major.

  ‘But the interesting thing was,’ he told Walter, ‘that Vera Chiang, who was here at the time, thought she understood that he was trying to say: “Sun Yat-sen”.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ cried Walter. ‘The old boy just wanted to go and prune his roses in the nude. He didn’t give tuppence for Sun Yat-sen.’ And clapping the Major cheerfully on the back Walter strode off, chuckling, through the compound in the direction of his own house; but as he went a grim thought came stealing after him through the hushed garden and pounced on him before he had reached the safety of his own walls: ‘This is how we all end up, mumbling rubbish to people who interpret it as they want!’

  On the evenings that followed, while Mr Webb, now mute again, continued to lie there, and on through June, July and August of 1941, Walter’s nostalgia for the old Singapore became acute. Perhaps this was paradoxical for in the old days, about which he was less and less able to resist holding forth to Major Archer at his dying partner’s bedside, business had never boomed the way it was booming now. But in those days the atmosphere had been different, more relaxed … no, it was not simply youth, though being young undoubtedly had something to do with it. No, it was the place itself. Singapore had been different in those days. Business had been an adventure, not the grim striving for advantage it had become latterly. They had been as if on a different time scale: everything had seemed to happen more slowly, more comfortably.

  Walter paused, staring up as if for enlightenment at the grey metallic blur of the ceiling fan and then down again at the billowing cocoon of the mosquito net within which lay old Mr Webb (soon to be hatched out into a better world). At one time in Singapore everyone had known everyone. Those were the days of great rambling colonial houses where the tradition of lavish hospitality lingered on from the nineteenth century. Ah well, all that had gone with the wind. In the course of time the bachelor messes, too, which the merchant houses kept going for their young chaps, had been replaced by blocks of flats. And once they had disappeared all the fun that young men used to have in the tropics had disappeared with them.

  It was the development of Singapore as a great naval and military base which had started the rot. People who had no real connection with the country had flooded in. The Military had their uses, he went on, forgetting that the Major himself had been a military man in his day, but they were nomads, here today and gone tomorrow, never bothering to get to know the people or the country. What was the result of this influx? Simply that the old feeling of space and tranquillity which used to make Singapore such a pleasant place to live in had gone, and gone for ever.

  ‘Sylvia and I used to motor thirty or forty miles sometimes in our pyjamas to have supper with friends in Johore. That’s what I call a comfortable way to live!’

  And the Major, though he would have preferred to discuss Japan’s increasingly threatening attitude in the sphere of international politics, was obliged to confess that going to a dinnerparty in pyjamas did sound to him the very model of a life of contentment: obviously in those days there was no risk of meeting maddened hordes of strikers waving parangs.

  The Singapore Club in the old days was not, declared Walter on another visit a few weeks later (forestalling the Major’s attempt to ask him what he thought of Roosevelt’s proposal, just announced, that French Indo-China should be considered a neutral country from which Japan could get food and raw materials; the Major had got on well with old Mr Webb and sorely missed his chairman’s forceful views on perplexing world topics), no, it was not the mixing pot of all ages and conditions it had since become, no sir! Nowadays you might find yourself rubbing shoulders with any young twerp just out from England or some other fellow whose too careful public school accent might slip from time to time exposing heaven knew what dubious origins. But then it had been truly exclusive, the sort of place frequented by the older and more influential men in the Colony, reserved exclusively for males, of course, except for New Year’s Day when ladies were invited for lunch to eat the traditional dish: Pheasant Lucullus! Yes, the Singapore Club used to be the lair of the Tuan Besar, like this poor old chap here, and it was quite a daunting prospect for a young man to go and visit him in it.

  A mere two days later, as the Major, perfectly disconsolate at being deprived of his chairman and unable to settle down to the paper work awaiting him in a very empty-seeming office, was roaming the bungalow like a dog without its master, he once more came upon Walter who had somehow stolen into the building without being seen and was lurking at the old man’s bedside.

  ‘Singapore had a pride in herself in those days,’ declared Walter, spotting the Major in the doorway, but then he hesitated, perhaps realizing that as an opening remark this might be considered odd. After a moment he cleared his throat and added: ‘Everything is all right here, is it, Major? If you need any help let me know and I’ll send someone down from the office.’

  The Major agreed that everything was in order. Indeed, since Blackett and Webb managed the day-to-day running of the Mayfair there was little for him to do except play cards with Dupigny (for the Frenchman, now penniless and a refugee in overcrowded Singapore, had been given shelter in one of the Mayfair’s many rooms) and at fixed hours to open up the recreation hut which old Mr Webb had patriotically built in the grounds for the troops flooding into the Colony (fortunately, no troops ever put in an appearance to make use of it). But though life had pursued its usual uneventful course at the headquarters of the Mayfair Rubber Company, there had been some alarming developments on the international scene: in response to the reported occupation by Japanese troops of the whole of Indo-China, America, Britain and Holland had frozen Japanese assets. One did not have to be an economist to see that this put Japan in a serious plight. Would this action make the Japanese see reason or would it light the blue-paper to a Far Eastern war? The Major was anxious to have Walter’s opinion about this (he had already had Dupigny’s which was deeply pessimistic, but then so were all Dupigny’s opinions), but Walter, brushing aside this prospective clashing of continents, was impatient to give the Major some idea of the pride that Singapore had had in herself. Lifting one corner of the mosquito net to peer at the grey, rigid form of his old friend he exclaimed: ‘My word! Before the Great War we came second to none. After it, too, for a time.’

  Taking the Major’s arm he explained with a chuckle how the great Russian dancer, Pavlova, had come to Singapore expecting to find herself dancing at the Town Hall theatre, only to find that it had already been booked by the Amateur Dramatic Society. Her manager had suggested that the Amateur Dramatic Society would not mind postponing its performance of Gilbert and Sullivan so that the great ballerina, before whom grovelled the most refined, most perfumed, most diamond-glittering, evening-dressed audiences in the world, might dance on the best stage available in the Straits. Ah, but as it turned out the Amateur Dramatic Society did mind! They had their pride. They had been founded over a hundred years ago. They saw no reason why they should surrender the Victoria Hall to a foreign artiste … and so she had to go off and make the best of a cramped little stage at the old German Club. And Walter laughed so long and loud that the ceiling rang with his laughter and even the melancholy Major looked amused … but had Walter’s laughter concealed a muffled cry from the direction of the mosquito net? The Major cast an uneasy glance in that direction. A strange rictus was twisting the old man’s lips. A mumbled cry broke from them which might have
been: ‘Sun Yatsen!’ (or might not, it was hard to tell).

  The Major freed himself from Walter’s grasp. It surely could not be … or could it? With an exclamation the Major sprang to his chairman’s side, whipping aside the film of mosquito netting. But too late! That smile or grimace, whichever it had been, that strangled cry, whatever it had meant, had been his last.

  ‘Young Matthew will be too late after all,’ observed Walter sadly. ‘And he’s due to arrive any day now.’

  >‘If you have an hour to spare,’ Walter said to Joan on the following day, ‘I should like to show you something.’

  Together father and daughter installed themselves in the back of the Bentley. Walter had evidently already given instructions to the syce for they set off without more ado in the direction of the river. Walter was more silent and subdued than usual and Joan found this whole expedition somewhat mysterious. ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

  ‘To look at a warehouse,’ he replied briefly but said no more. Only when the motor-car was nudging its way along the crowded streets beside the river did Walter again break his silence, to ask Joan if she had seen Ehrendorf.

  ‘No. I’ve finished with him,’ said Joan with a smile.

  ‘Ah,’ said Walter. ‘Good enough.’ He leaned forward to tap the syce on the shoulder. With considerable difficulty on account of the lorries being loaded and unloaded at the wharves where lighters and tong-kangs clustered several deep they had reached a tall brick godown at a bend in the river. Apart from the fact that it was built of brick in a conservative style and bore an inscription in white letters: Blackett and Webb Limited, recently repainted for the jubilee celebrations, there was nothing very remarkable about it.

  ‘You may wonder why I brought you here,’ said Walter, smiling now. ‘As you see, it’s just a godown, nothing very special. But to me this building is rather important because it’s the first we put up here in Singapore and, incidentally, an exact replica of Webb’s first building in Rangoon. I used to come here a lot and day-dream as a young man. Not that old Webb used to give me much time for day-dreaming. There’s a little office up above … Let’s go up if you don’t mind getting your frock dusty.’

  They stepped through a small door cut in the massive wooden gates facing the road. After the heat and sunshine of the road it seemed dark and cool inside. Dust sparkled in a shaft of sunlight which blazed at their feet and cast a dim light back over the rest of the cavernous building, illuminating the bales of rubber which rose around them.

  ‘I used to think I’d bring Monty here one day but I doubt if he’d understand what the place means to me.’

  They climbed a swaying ladder, Joan going first, to a dim ledge that hung in the shadows above them. As he followed her Walter noticed his daughter’s strong thighs beneath her frock and thought: ‘Yes, she’s a real Blackett. She has pluck. Her mother would never climb a ladder like that.’ When he had reached the ledge Walter led the way through a maze of rubber bales to a little store-keeper’s office with a window over the river. ‘Here we are,’ he announced. ‘This is my little nest. You have the chair. I’ll sit on the table. Well, my dear, the reason I asked you to come here isn’t only sentimental, though that may be part of it. The fact is that the business is at a crossroads now that Mr Webb is dead and I am going to need your help. As you know, Matthew Webb who is due out here shortly will inherit his father’s share of the business. Well, we don’t know what he’s like exactly but as far as I can make out he’s a somewhat muddled person. We don’t want him rocking the boat, therefore … No, Joan, just let me finish … therefore it would suit me, putting it in a nut-shell, and I hope you won’t mind me suggesting this … it would suit me if he found you as attractive as, let’s say, his chum Ehrendorf does … Yes, in a moment, Joan, but please let me have my say first. Now I want you to understand that I’m not asking you for anything more, though I shall be pleased if you find a good husband one of these days … Just make him find you attractive, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how although … and this is something that I have never told anyone, not even your mother … the one sure way that a woman can make a man lose his head is by blowing hot and cold, you know the sort of thing, loving one moment, indifferent the next, that sort of feminine way of carrying on is something, let me tell you straight, that a man finds irresistible Well, there you are, but before you give me your answer just let me repeat two things. Firstly, the business could well be vulnerable to foolish behaviour by Matthew Webb and, secondly, you don’t have to marry him if you don’t want to. It will be enough if you get him under your thumb for a couple of years. There!’

  ‘But Father!’ exclaimed Joan, laughing and jumping up from her chair to give her father a hug. ‘How old-fashioned you are to deliver such a speech! I took it for granted long ago that you’d want me to marry Matthew for the sake of the firm. And the answer is “yes”, of course. I don’t care what he’s like! You took such a long time to pop the question. I was beginning to think you’d never ask!’

  Part Two

  13

  On account of the hazards of war-time, the convoys that were diverted without explanation, the passenger vessels that were commandeered for the movement of troops, the seats on aeroplanes usurped at the last moment by august officials, not to mention the spies that lurked everywhere and studied every mortal thing that moved on the face of the earth through field-glasses or kept their treacherous ears open while quaffing pints in dockside pubs, Matthew Webb had been frustrated again and again in his efforts to reach Singapore. The result was that the month of November was already well advanced before he found himself on the last stages of his journey. By that time, though his impending arrival had not been forgotten by the Blacketts (Walter brooded on it constantly and so, presumably, did Joan), it had assumed less momentous proportions than in the first days after Mr Webb’s death. Walter could see the matter now more in perspective, for the old man had been buried for almost a month, sad news which had been conveyed to Matthew in Colombo where he had been stranded interminably until Walter could pull a string or two with the RAF. Moreover, in the frenzied commercial atmosphere of Singapore at the time, exacerbated by the bewildering arrival of more and yet more troops from Australia and India, who could manage to spare time for such domestic, or dynastic, matters, or even, if it comes to that, think of the same thing for two moments running? But at last Matthew was about to arrive.

  The Avro Anson which for an hour or more had been following the wandering dark-green edge of the coast now swung out to sea before turning north-west in a wide curve that would bring it back over Singapore. For a few moments nothing could be seen but an expanse of water so dazzling that it hurt Matthew’s eyes as he looked down on it from the cabin window. Then, as the Anson floated in over the harbour in which lay three grey warships and a multitude of other vessels, over the railway station with its track curving away across the island to the Causeway, and over a number of miniature buildings scarcely big enough to house a colony of fleas, it began to wobble in a dreadful, sickening fashion, and to lose height. Presently, the Singapore River (which was really nothing but a tidal creek) crept from under the wing, ominously bulging near its mouth like a snake which had just swallowed a rabbit and then trailing back inland to the thinnest of tails on the far side of the city.

  Next there came an open green space on which a fleas’ cricket match was taking place and then the toy spire of a cathedral, aptly set at the intersection of diagonal paths forming the cross of St Andrew, with one or two flea-worshippers scurrying over its green sward to offer up their evening prayers, for the sun, though still brightly fingering the cabin of the aircraft, was already casting deep shadows over the cathedral lawns … But again the plane dropped sickeningly and the wing on one side tilted up in the most alarming way, so that even though Matthew continued to look down he could still see nothing but sky. This dismaying sensation continued until the plane had completed a full circle and was coming in from the sea again with level w
ings. But even so, every few moments the floor would seem to drop away and when Matthew tried to interest himself, as a diversion, in MacFadyean’s History of the Rubber Industry which lay open on his lap, he was promptly obliged to jettison even this light work from his thoughts, simply to keep the plane airborne.

  By now they were distressingly near the surface. He saw waves, then a junk floating past the cabin window with a thick-veined sail, then a flotsam of human heads and waving hands. Somehow or other the wheels cleared the roof of the swimming club at Tanjong Rhu (Matthew would have thought they were too low to have cleared anything at all). A few more perilous wobbles and the wheels consented to touch down with a bump and a brief howl, followed by another bump as the tail touched. The journey had been a strain: he had never been up in an aeroplane before. But now he felt relieved and pleased with himself; soon he would be describing the experience to his earthbound friends.

  ‘Don’t forget to watch out for the Singapore Grip!’ shouted one of the crew after him in a clamour of cheerful goodbyes and laughter as he jumped stiffly to the ground.

  Now he found himself standing on the tarmac, a little unsteadily on account of the equatorial gale from the still turning propellors. Uncertain which way to walk he peered around in the haze of evening sunlight. The heat was suddenly stifling: he was clad in it from head to toe, as if wrapped in steaming towels.

  A figure in a white flannel suit was hurrying towards him into the slip-stream, trouser legs flapping, jacket ballooning and one large hand clapped on to a khaki sun-helmet to keep it on his head. The other hand was held out even from some yards’ distance towards Matthew who, a moment later, found himself shaking it.