‘By the way, that reminds me,’ remarked Ehrendorf, who had just been splashing himself from the Shanghai jar in the bathroom and now came in drying his hair to join the company, ‘it seems that the expression, “the Singapore Grip”, refers to the ability acquired by certain ladies of Singapore to control their autonomous vaginal muscles, apparently with delightful results. The girls from the Poh Leung Kuk agreed to tell me what it was for a dollar. They hinted that for ten dollars it might be possible to arrange a demonstration. Er … of course I didn’t accept,’ he added, seeing that the Major was looking upset.
‘No, Jim, that’s not what the Singapore Grip is,’ cried Matthew, his eyes flashing more than ever. ‘I know what it is! It’s the grip of our Western culture and economy on the Far East… It’s the stranglehold of capital on the traditional cultures of Malaya, China, Burma, Java, Indo-China and even India herself! It’s the doing of things our way … I mean, it’s the pursuit of self-interest rather than of the common interest! But one day we shall have a new League of Nations to conduct the world’s affairs with reason and justice and humanity! A League of Nations not made up of cynical power-brokers but of philosophers and philanthropists whose only desire will be to bind the nations and the races together!’
Ehrendorf sighed, thinking that in any case the Singapore Grip was about to be pried loose, if that was what it was. After some moments of hesitation and comparing of vintages, he selected the Laffitte. Altogether it had been a hard day.
*Never mind.
Part Six
64
If you follow the Singapore River, from its mouth where it bulges and curves beneath the Fullerton Building, back along its many twists and turns, between sampans and barges so tightly packed that in places there is scarcely a channel wide enough for the flow of water-traffic, back almost as far as The Great World, then you will see an unusually handsome godown on the right bank, taller than any of the other godowns that line the river at that point, taller than any building of any kind for some distance and made taller by the familiar sign on its roof: Blackett and Webb Limited, painted white for the jubilee … Or rather, you would have seen it in those days, for now it no longer exists. The place where it once stood is now dominated by several many-storey apartment buildings where the resettled inhabitants of former Chinese slums now live, and even The Great World itself is mostly shuttered and empty, trembling on the very brink of no longer existing: its fortune-tellers, quacks and ronggeng dancers, its Chinese actors and mounte-banks, its brewers of monkey-soup and sellers of fruit, its pimps and soldiers and whores, have all been dumped in the dustbin of history and the lid clapped firmly on top of them. Their place has been taken by prosperous-looking workers from the electronic factories out for an evening stroll with their children, by a party of polite Japanese tourists with cameras who have strayed here by mistake, and by the author of this book writing busily in a small red notebook and scratching his knuckles where some lonely, last-remaining mosquito (for even they have mostly departed or been done away with), ignoring his dignified appearance, has not hesitated to bite him as he scribbles.
This particular godown was the one to which Walter had taken Joan to propose that she should marry Matthew (how far off that seemed now!): it was the oldest, the biggest, Walter’s favourite, the replica of that first warehouse in Rangoon which, in happier times, he had been so pleased to point out to visitors when he was showing them the paintings that hung in his drawing-room. To that first godown in Rangoon who knows what happened? No doubt it was knocked down, or fell down, or a fine offer was made for it, or perhaps it was even turned into a cinema. Walter did not know. But he was glad that this one still existed. For Walter had learned something important from his life in commerce: that business is not simply a matter of making profits.
A successful and respectable business, on the contrary, is deeply embedded in the life of its time and place. A respectable business supports the prevalent beliefs of the society of which it is a part. If society at large considers it immoral for a woman to smoke a cigarette in the street or for a man to wear a hat at his dining-table, then you will certainly not find Blackett and Webb countenancing such behaviour in their staff. Not only at Blackett and Webb but at every other business of standing in Singapore the clerical staff, despite the temperature, were expected to wear white suits and black ties. Even the better Asiatic houses followed this custom. Respectability is important in business because it generates more and better custom: it means you will pay your debts and deliver the goods, resisting the temptation to make a bolt for the hills. Better business in turn generates more respectability. But in order to be respectable you do have to know what society approves of. Provided you know that, then there is no problem: your business can play its full part in the community. It is only at a time like the present when it is hard to be sure what society at large believes, or if it believes anything at all, that a businessman grows baffled and uneasy and perhaps with a shrug of his shoulders gives it up and limits himself to a dogged pursuit of his profits.
Walter certainly had not reached that stage; witness the effort and expense he had consecrated to his jubilee celebrations. But already, it seemed to him, Blackett and Webb was beginning to stand out as an oasis of old-fashioned virtues in a desert of less scrupulous businesses. It was ‘the spirit of the times’ again, that is what it was! Wherever you looked you saw it at work. Now, Walter had heard, in England women were no longer wearing hats and were going into pubs. Some women, even in Singapore, had taken to wearing trousers, not something he would have permitted to his own women-folk. Well, continue along that road and one fine day you would find that a gentleman’s word was no longer his bond, but more likely an attempt to talk you into something. Why was this godown important to Walter? Because for him it symbolized the old-fashioned virtues and beliefs which were melting away all around him, progressively, in concert with the decaying spirit of earlier times to which he had been accustomed.
And yet … a man must move with the times. Think of those rice-millers in London for whom the Suez Canal had proved a banana skin on the road to prosperity! This godown was also important to Walter for the great qualities of raw rubber that it contained. A business cannot embody the highest aims of society without trading profitably from its warehouses. What they contain must not be wasted or abandoned. It was out of the question to allow these warehouses not to make the profit which lay piled up within their shadowy walls.
Now on Monday, 8 February, came the news that the Japanese had succeeded in landing on the Island in the course of the night. Walter found himself faced with a disturbing prospect: the contents of this building on the river and of several other godowns nearby would most likely be destroyed in accordance with a contingency plan for the denial of useful materials to the Japanese. He had long expected something of the sort if the Japanese pursued their advance. Reports had reached him in recent weeks that officials from the Public Works Department had been snooping about making enquiries as to the contents of his various godowns. Their first visits had been discreet: the authorities had been anxious not to sap morale by making too obvious preparations for a capitulation … Lately they had become more officious.
Today there came word that the Governor had authorized destruction of British-owned engineering plant, oil and rubber stocks, liquor supplies and various others goods and materials that the Japanese might consider valuable. Well, he had expected that it would come to this … But above all it was the selective nature of the Governor’s denial plans that stung Walter: Blackett and Webb (Engineering) Limited would be razed while neighbouring Chinese enterprises would be left untouched! It was an outrage. He promptly telephoned the Governor … but could not get through. He tried to arrange an appointment with the Governor’s staff: he had never had any trouble doing so before, yet now when it was necessary he found himself being headed off by pipsqueaks of secretaries. He would be left for minutes at a time holding a telephone receiver, obliged to listen to bafflin
g electrical interference: strange hiccups, faintly tinkling xylophones, the ringing of distant telephones on other lines, and ghostly voices speaking gibberish which, however, sometimes held a queer sort of significance.
‘Old men must die. They’d not be human otherwise,’ someone remarked cheerfully in the middle of a blizzard of clickings and buzzings. ‘We’re all on a conveyor belt, each one of us. We all must fall off at the other end. Does that answer your question?’ Walter strained his ears but only to hear what sounded like a whole office full of telephones ringing. He put the telephone down, shattered. He was not used to making his own telephone calls at the best of times: that was his secretary’s job. He picked up the receiver again: this time he heard what he was convinced was a stream of Japanese followed by high-pitched laughter. But they had only been on the Island since the previous night: they would hardly be using the telephones already. He tried to summon one of his assistants who understood Japanese but by the time he arrived the voice had been replaced by silence and, eventually, by the ominous ticking of a clock.
‘Would you mind getting off this line, please?’ demanded a woman’s voice rudely.
‘I certainly would!’ snapped Walter. ‘Blackett here … of Blackett and Webb. I want to speak to the Governor and I’ve been kept waiting forty minutes already.’ A click. No answer.
Walter was abruptly seized by a dismaying thought: he had surely recognized the woman’s voice. Had it not been Lady Thomas herself? He was almost sure of it. But no, wait a moment. Lady Thomas was ill. He had heard someone saying so at the Club and he himself had even sent one of his staff to Government House with a basket of orchids and a note signed by … by his wife, a forgery to which he was well accustomed and to which she had never raised any objection. He had forgotten for the moment that his wife was now in Australia. Moreover, Lady Thomas would certainly know she was there and would be perplexed to receive a note from her in Singapore … But the man he had sent had returned still with the basket of orchids and the note (why had he not grabbed it back, oh fool!) saying that he had not been allowed past the gate, that the place was a shambles. How a shambles? Bomb-craters everywhere. Walter had flown into a rage, suspecting that the fellow had not bothered to go to Government House at all, that he considered such a messenger’s job beneath his dignity. Bomb-craters indeed! Walter had ordered him back to Government House and told him not to show himself again until he had delivered the orchids. Neither the messenger, nor the orchids, nor the note had been heard of since. Lady Thomas must consider him completely mad … a note sent by his absent wife … he himself rude to her on the telephone …
‘Things do not look particularly rosy,’ agreed the telephone. And then: ‘Thy sex to love!’ Or was it: ‘Three sets to love!’? Walter strained his ears but could not be sure.
Never mind. Never mind all that. It was of no great importance what she thought. Besides, it was clear to him that he was being deliberately baulked by the Government House staff, with or without the Governor’s permission. All right, all right, he thought, making a feeble effort to look at both sides of the question, it was true that the Governor must have a lot on his mind with the Japanese on the Island … but not to be able to get hold of him for such an important matter, that was an outrage! ‘And whose taxes go to paying the salaries of these stuffed shirts I should like to know!’
But never mind. Even if he succeeded in buttonholing the Governor, he doubted whether he would be very helpful. Sir Shenton would be too conventional to entertain seriously the proposal which Walter had in mind. For, to Walter, the matter was plain: the Japanese were going to get more rubber than they had a use for, whatever happened. They already had under their control the entire production of Indo-China and Malaya. The Japanese would very likely agree that it was senseless to destroy the rubber in Walter’s godowns. Well then, why should it not be kept pending the end of the war or, even better, sold under a strict guarantee to some non-belligerent nation such as Mexico or Portugal? Here Walter would have trading contracts and experience which the Japanese could put to good use: an understanding beneficial to all could certainly be reached with one of the zaibatsu. Walter had, he considered, an advantage over the Governor. He had had dealings for years with the Japanese. They were not ogres to him, as they undoubtedly were to Sir Shenton. Hard competitors they certainly were, but for that Walter could only admire them. Yes, an advantage could be won for Blackett and Webb in concert with, say, Mitsubishi, which would do no harm to anybody, least of all to the British War Effort. But Walter knew he must be realistic. There was little prospect of the Governor accepting such a plan.
Again he picked up the telephone. ‘Who’s there?’ he demanded. For a while there was only that distant cascade of cymbals. ‘You see,’ said the telephone suddenly, ‘capitalism used to mean a competitive export of goods, but that’s all a thing of the past, I’m afraid. We now export cash instead … sending it out here where it can make a bigger profit, thanks to low wages and the land available for estates. The result is that we’ve become a parasite on the land and labour of Malaya and our other colonies. Did you know, Walter, that bond-holdings brought in five times more revenue than actual foreign trade for Britain?’
‘What?’ demanded Walter. ‘Are you talking to me?’ But the voice had faded once more into the ghostly plucking of a harp. And anyway, it must have been someone else called Walter.
On the other hand, Walter realized suddenly, there was probably no need to worry about the rubber, at least for the moment. For there was so much of it, several thousand tons. Unless they had some mad idea of burning down the buildings as well, which was surely not the case, the PWD busybodies would need several weeks merely to shift the rubber from the godowns to a suitable site for burning. The same was probably true of other commodities which Blackett and Webb held in their godowns. It was evident that what was most at risk was the investment in engineering and motor-assembly plants. It was that which would need protection. It was that which the PWD men would go for first.
But oddly enough, as it turned out, they did not. They went for Walter’s liquor godown at the docks. A telephone message chased him round the city, warning him. He could no longer bear to sit in the improvised offices in Tanglin surrounded by a staff which had by now shrunk, thanks to the demands of the passive defence services, to an efficient young Cantonese, a couple of elderly Englishmen who but for the war would long since have been put out to grass, and two or three Eurasian typists. So, despite the danger, Walter had himself driven about the city inspecting the various Blackett and Webb premises and offering a word of encouragement to whatever staff remained (for here, too, the number of his employees was shrinking daily, almost hourly). Mohammed, his syce, did not seem to mind: he, too, seemed anxious to pursue his normal life.
Although he seldom stayed for more than a few minutes at each place he visited, it now took so long to cross the ruined city that the better part of Walter’s day was spent in the car, an ancient Alvis which Mohammed had found somewhere. Monty had evidently succeeded in getting both himself and the Bentley away on the Félix Roussel. Apart from faint surprise that the boy should have had sufficient initiative, Walter had no strong feelings about his son’s desertion. On the whole he was better out of the way. Once or twice, though, staring out with sightless eyes at the boiling streets, the thought of Harvey Firestone’s five efficient sons made him clench his fists and caused the bristles to stir on his spine. How promising life had once appeared, how disastrously it had turned out!
Even the city now was hardly recognizable any longer as the place where he had spent such a great part of his life. The roads were clogged with military vehicles, there were gun emplacements every few yards, each crossroads seemed to have its own traffic jam which sweating military policemen were trying to free. And everywhere he looked he saw bomb-craters and rubble, shattered trees, uprooted lamp-posts, tangled tramway cables, and smoke from the buildings burning on every side. With the smoke there came, barely noticeab
le at first, a disagreeable smell. Old Singapore hands like Walter were used to unpleasant smells: they came from everywhere … from the drains and from the river above all, but also from less likely places, from Tanglin rose-gardens for instance, where the ‘boys’ sometimes failed to bury properly the household excrement, or someone’s spaniel dug it up again. In Singapore you could never be quite safe: even while you stood smiling fixedly under the great candelabra in the ballroom at Government House, once a gift from the Emperor Franz Josef to the third Duke of Buckingham, you might suddenly get a distinct whiff of something disagreeable. But this was different. This was altogether more sickening. It seemed to cling to your hair and clothes. When you took out your handkerchief to blow your nose it was there, too. Presently, it became stronger and not even the swirling smoke could disguise the fact that it came from the bodies stretched in rows on the pavements which no one had yet had time to bury.
Tired of the endless delays and traffic jams on the way to Tanglin, Walter had a camp bed and a desk installed in the disused store-keeper’s office in the godown on the river where he had brought Joan one day not very long ago. Thank heaven that she and Nigel had got away, at any rate! This little office, which was really just a box of wood and glass without a roof other than that of the godown itself way above, had strong associations for Walter, reminding him of the old days. It was peaceful here, too, and very quiet. The dim light, the smell of the raw rubber which rose in tiers, bale upon bale, to the dim heights of the roof, he found infinitely soothing. There was a window, too, in the office from which he could contemplate the river, not so very different even now from the river he had gazed at as a young man from this spot. He needed this tranquillity to restore and refresh himself after his wanderings in the city.
The Empire Trilogy Page 147