The Empire Trilogy

by J. G. Farrell

  ‘You’re Matthew Webb, aren’t you? I’m Monty Blackett. I expect you’ve heard of me … Hm, now let me see, I don’t think we have met before, have we? Never mind, anyway. It doesn’t make any difference. We’ll get to know each other in a jiffy, I expect. Can’t very well help it in a hole like this.’ Monty was a burly young man about the same age as Matthew but his face had a heavy-set appearance which made him look older: an impression reinforced when he removed his sunhelmet for a moment to scratch his head by the fact that his hair was receding. Matthew wondered whether the black tie he was wearing, which had been blown back over his shoulder, was a mark of respect for his father or merely conventional Singapore attire.

  After the two young men had exchanged greetings, which they had to shout because of the noise from the engines, there was an awkward pause between them.

  ‘Look, it’s been raining,’ Matthew shouted, nodding at the shivering pools of rainwater that lay here and there on the tarmac; at the same time he smiled at himself, thinking that that was not what he had meant to say at all.

  ‘What?’ bellowed Monty, stepping forward and giving Matthew an odd look. ‘Yes, I’ll say it has, it rains almost every bloody day at the moment, I’ll have you know. Come on now,’ he added, ‘enough of the weather.’ He took Matthew’s arm to steer him away from that whining aeroplane which only then agreed to arrest its motors with a few last chugs and swishes. ‘Well, well, same old Matthew,’ he chuckled cautiously, though, strictly speaking, he could not have known very much about the ‘old Matthew’ at all, since they had never met before. Once more he darted an odd, sideways look at Matthew as if trying to weigh him up, while, still chuckling vaguely, he conducted him to the terminal building, a surprisingly up-to-date construction with control tower and observation decks, somewhat resembling a cinema. Matthew remarked on its modern appearance. Singapore must be quite …

  ‘Oh yeah,’ agreed Monty indifferently. Brightening a little, he added: ‘They have a restaurant there. You don’t feel like some oysters, do you? They fly them in from Hawkesbury River in Australia. Look, that’s not such a bad idea …’

  ‘Well, not just at the moment, thanks,’ said Matthew, surprised. Monty’s enthusiasm subsided with a grimace. Matthew, still groping for a topic of conversation, said: ‘I must say, I don’t know how you stand this heat.’

  ‘Heat? This is the coolest part of the day. Wait and see how hot it can get here. I say, is something the matter?’ For Matthew had suddenly stiffened.

  ‘I think that man is making off with my bags.’ Like many people whose natural inclination is to think the best of people Matthew found it necessary, when travelling, to remain dramatically on the alert to defend himself against malefactors.

  ‘He bloody well better had be,’ grinned Monty. ‘Otherwise he’ll get hell from me!’

  ‘You mean …?’

  ‘Of course. He’s our syce … you know, chauffeur. Now don’t worry, old boy. Just trust old Monty. Everything’s organized. Come on, Sis is waiting for us in the car …’ And with that he led the way out of the building uttering a strange, smothered groan as he went. Matthew hurried after him, filled with pleasure at the prospect of seeing little Kate, to whom he had taken a considerable liking in the course of their one short meeting.

  ‘Monty, I must thank you for getting me on that plane. Otherwise I might have been stuck in Ceylon for ever, what with the war and so forth.’

  ‘Think nothing of it. We just pulled a few of the right strings and it was a stroke of luck that there happened to be an empty plane coming our way. You see, the point is this …’

  Now they had reached the motor-car and Monty broke off to give the driver some instructions. The latter murmured: ‘Yes, Tuan,’ and stowed Matthew’s suitcases in the back of the vehicle; this was a huge open Pontiac with white tyres, a wide running-board and deep leather seats. A young woman whom Matthew failed to recognize was half reclining on the back seat, holding a cigarette holder in a studied pose. She was wearing a simple white cotton frock and a green turban with two knots which stood up, Hollywood style, like a rabbit’s ears. The haft of a tennis racket was gripped between her bare calves and its glimmering strings between her pretty, pink knees. She ignored Matthew’s greeting and said to Monty: ‘Let’s scram before I die of heat.’ Matthew, disappointed to find this person instead of Kate, tried not to stare at her: this must be Joan Blackett, Kate’s elder sister. Kate had spoken of her as of a superior being, sophisticated beyond measure, terrorizing the young men of the Colony with her irresistible appeal, breaking hearts with as little compunction as if they had been chipped dinner-plates.

  ‘But the point is this …’ Monty was repeating, a trifle more sonorously than before, now that they were comfortably installed in the Pontiac one on each side of Joan. There was another pause, however, while the young men each lit a Craven A.

  ‘The point is this,’ he said yet again, puffing out an authoritative cloud of blue smoke. As he did so, Matthew found himself wondering whether Monty Blackett might not on occasion be ever so slightly ponderous and self-important, and though, of course, it had been kind of Monty to come and meet him, nevertheless, an ungrateful voice whispered in Matthew’s ear: ‘What is the point?’ and he glanced quickly at Joan to see whether she was sharing his impatience. But she was looking moodily in another direction… towards the wind-sock waltzing impatiently in the breeze at the end of the aerodrome, or towards a large American limousine with Stars and Stripes fluttering from its bonnet which had come into the airport drive at great speed with a squeal of tyres as it negotiated the bend but was now nosing uncertainly in the direction of the terminal building while the driver made up his mind which way to go. Presently, she turned her turbaned profile and her grey eyes fixed themselves intently on his face. He stirred uneasily.

  ‘The point is, Matthew, that at the moment the blighters are so anxious for our rubber that they go out of their way to help whenever they can. They’re not usually so helpful, I can assure you. And it doesn’t stop the bloody bureaucrats, those clever merchants in Whitehall, making a nuisance of themselves whenever they get the chance. We’re constantly battling with penpushers in some ministry or other a few thousands miles away.’ He added sententiously: ‘You’ll soon find that out when you have a look at the files in your father’s office. Now what’s all this? What does this cove want?’

  While Monty had been speaking the American limousine which had been prowling about uncertainly for a while had at last made up its mind to approach the Pontiac. It came to a stop beside them and an American soldier slid out from behind the wheel and held the door open.

  ‘Oh lumme, it’s him,’ said Monty, glancing at Joan.

  ‘Great Scott!’ exclaimed Matthew. ‘I know that bloke. We were at Oxford together. His name’s Jim Ehrendorf … He’s a really wonderful fellow, you must meet him. I was meaning to try and look him up when I got here and now … but wait a sec … Of course, you already know him, don’t you?’ And Matthew clapped a hand to his brow.

  ‘Yes, we do,’ said Monty. ‘The thing is …’ But without waiting to hear what the thing was, Matthew had leaped out of the Pontiac and was warmly shaking hands with the smiling Ehrendorf. They exchanged a few words, both talking at once. Joan and Monty watched them blankly from the motor-car.

  ‘I thought I wouldn’t get here in time,’ Ehrendorf was saying as they turned back towards the Pontiac, ‘and I’m tied up for the rest of the day. In fact, I wouldn’t have heard you were arriving at all if it hadn’t been for the chance of meeting up with Walter downtown. Hiya Monty, Hiya Joan!’

  ‘Hiya,’ said Monty. Joan showed no more sign of acknowledging Ehrendorf’s presence than she had Matthew’s. She looked irritable and said again: ‘For God’s sake, let’s scram … It’s so hot.’

  ‘How pretty you look, Joan, in your vêtement de sport,’ said Ehrendorf in a way that managed to be both casual and rather tense. ‘ “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” ’
>
  ‘I’d far rather you didn’t, if you don’t mind,’ replied Joan sullenly. ‘Let’s go, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I know his type,’ said Matthew. ‘Next thing, he’ll be trying to tell you you’re “more lovely and more temperate”.’ Both he and Ehrendorf laughed but the two Blacketts did not share their amusement; indeed they both looked rather put out.

  Ehrendorf continued to stand uncertainly beside the motorcar, gazing at Joan, who looked away petulantly. Matthew took out a handkerchief, removed his glasses and mopped his streaming face. The heat was dreadful, despite the breeze and the approach of night.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ said Ehrendorf. ‘Why don’t I ride in with you guys. I’ll tell my driver to follow and then I can go on from there.’ Without waiting for approval Ehrendorf spoke to his driver and then installed himself in the front seat of the Pontiac. Matthew climbed in beside Joan again.

  Now the Pontiac was in motion at last; an air of interrogation, of words unspoken, formed over it as it swung out of the aerodrome gates. From near at hand there suddenly came a clamour of music, laughter and singing. A thousand coloured lights twinkled in the gathering dusk through a grove of trees that lay just to their right in the fork of the two roads. Keeling over like a yacht tacking against the wind the Pontiac turned away from the lights on to the Kallang Road.

  ‘That’s one of the sights,’ Monty said, pointing back with his cigarette shedding sparks. ‘A sort of funfair called The Happy World. They’re going to catch hell, though, unless they do something about blacking out those lights.’

  ‘There’s a better place called The Great World on Kim Seng Road on the other side of town,’ said Ehrendorf, turning to grin at Matthew. ‘You’ll be able to dance with lovely taxi-girls there. Twenty-five cents a throw.’

  Matthew decided not to ask for the moment what a ‘taxi-girl’ was. Instead he said: ‘You didn’t have that natty moustache in Geneva, did you, Jim? And what have you done to your hand?’ For Ehrendorf, though he no longer wore a bandage, still had plaster around his fingers. But to Matthew’s surprise these questions only seemed to embarrass Ehrendorf (was he sensitive about his moustache?) who murmured vaguely that it was nothing, he’d stupidly burned himself a few weeks earlier, and then, without further comment, turned his evidently sensitive moustache to face forward again while he examined the road ahead through the windscreen.

  Meanwhile the Pontiac had howled over a bridge and was careering through the twilight at an alarming speed. Every now and then as an obstruction loomed up the driver would brake and swerve violently. The horn blared without pause. The blurred forms of rickshaws, motor-cars and bullock-carts receded rapidly on either side. Once, to avoid a traffic jam which suddenly presented itself, they mounted a verge and without slackening speed thrashed through some sort of vegetation, evidently someone’s garden.

  ‘Good God!’ thought Matthew. ‘Do they always drive like this?’

  ‘People in Britain seem to find it amazing,’ Monty was saying, his thoughts still on their earlier conversation, ‘that we should know more about running the rubber business than they do in Whitehall. What they don’t seem to realize is that if we suffer here in Singapore, everything suffers, and that includes their wizard War Effort. It’s so hard to get anything done with these bloody civil servants. Sometimes I wonder if they haven’t all got infantile paralysis!’ And Monty bent his wrist, hunched his shoulders and twisted his face into a highly amusing imitation of a cripple. But Matthew found it hard to smile: he had somehow never found imitations of cripples very entertaining. Monty did not notice this lack of response, however, and shed a great bark of laughter into the humid, sweltering twilight.

  Becoming serious again Monty said, pointing at a group of dim buildings on the left: ‘That’s the Firestone factory where last summer’s strikes were started by the Commies. Thanks to the bungling of our little men in the Government they very nearly turned it into a general strike.’ Matthew, who had been beginning to fear that he and Monty might have no common interest, became attentive and ventured to remark that he was interested, not only in political strikes and the relations of native workers to European employers, but also in … well, the ‘colonial experience’ as a whole. But Monty’s response was disappointing.

  ‘Oh, you’re interested in the “colonial experience”, are you?’ he mumbled indifferently. ‘Well, you’ve come to the right place. You’ll get a basinful of it here, all right.’

  Ehrendorf glanced round quickly but without catching Matthew’s eye. His glance, indeed, got no further than Joan’s tennis racket still tightly gripped between her knees as she lolled back against the leather seat: he stared at the racket with great intensity, but only for a moment. Then his moustache was dividing the breeze again.

  For some time the spinning back and forth of the Pontiac’s steering-wheel as they swerved to avoid other vehicles had caused the three young people on the back seat to sway from side to side. Joan, because she was in the middle and had less to hold on to, tended to slide more than the others and already once or twice Matthew had found himself pressed against her soft body while she struggled to recover. Now, however, as the Pontiac negotiated a wide curve with muttering tyres and Joan was once more thrown up against him, she appeared to abandon the unequal struggle: she simply lay against him with her head on his shoulder. Matthew wondered whether to push her off but decided it might not seem polite: better to wait for a curve in the opposite direction to do the job for him. In a few moments the car straightened its course again, which should have allowed her to slide back towards her brother, but to his surprise she remained where she was, sprawled against him. And even when, presently, off-side tyres howling like souls in torment, they entered a curve in the opposite direction, she still remained firmly glued to his side, as if all the laws of physics had been suspended in her favour. Then he really did begin to wonder, because that surely could not be right.

  Matthew licked his lips, perplexed. He was not quite sure what to make of it all. The truth was that he felt too hot already without having someone pressed against him. He was very much tempted to shove her away to allow the air to circulate. Not that he found the sensation of her body against him altogether disagreeable, he had to admit. But still, it was a bit awkward. Ah, now he caught a tantalizing breath of French perfume on the rushing tropical evening.

  ‘Watch out for that tennis racket, Sis,’ said Monty with a leer.

  Matthew glanced at the turbaned head beside him but Joan showed no sign of having heard her brother’s remark. Nor had Ehrendorf apparently. At any rate, only the neatly barbered back of his head continued to be visible.

  Thinking that perhaps some conversation might revive Joan sufficiently to unglue her from his side Matthew asked: ‘Does anyone happen to know what the Singapore Grip is? The RAF blokes in the plane kept telling me to watch out for it but they wouldn’t tell me what it actually was!’ But as a conversational opening this proved a failure. Nobody replied or showed any sign of having heard. ‘How deuced odd they all are!’ thought Matthew crossly. ‘And what’s the matter with Jim Ehrendorf?’ He was tired from his journey, too tired to make an effort with people who were not prepared to make an effort back.

  Monty, meanwhile, had pulled the brim of his sun-helmet over his eyes, turned up his collar, stuck his cigarette in the corner of his mouth and was saying in a hoarse, gangster voice: ‘Keep your heads down, you guys. The men from the Ministry of Supply are after us!’ Again the Pontiac shed a great bark of laughter as it raced on into the city, leaving it to float behind among the padding rickshaw coolies who formed a slow stream on either side of the road.

  14

  Weariness caused Matthew to give up the struggle for a while; he merely lay back against the sighing leather-clad springs. He could not think what was the matter with Ehrendorf who might have been hypnotized the way he continued to gaze stolidly at the road ahead: this was quite unlike the gay and talkative person Matthew had known in Oxford and Genev
a.

  ‘I suppose everyone here is worried about these talks with the Japs in Washington,’ he said presently, hoping again to initiate a conversation. But Ehrendorf still made no reply and Monty, who did not appear to have heard of them, merely asked: ‘What talks?’

  Surprised, Matthew explained that Admiral Nomura, the Japanese Ambassador in Washington, had been having talks with the American Government. The Americans wanted the Japs to move their troops out of Indo-China and to agree to peace in the Pacific; the Japs wanted the Americans to stop helping Chiang Kai-shek in their war against China and to unfreeze their assets. Things would look grim if they didn’t agree. That was why he had expected that people in Singapore might be worried.

  ‘I suppose some people may have the wind up,’ said Monty indifferently.

  Matthew decided to give up once more and let events take their course. While he lay slumped in the corner of the seat with a young woman sprawled on his shoulder like a hot compress, one curious picture after another trembled before his eyes, reminding him of the ‘magic lantern’ he had played with as a child. One moment the Pontiac was grumbling and nudging its way through a narrow street hung with banners of Chinese ideographs, the next it was speeding down a wide avenue between silver slopes which flashed and winked at him and proved to be great banks of fish (Matthew was glad of the speed: the stench was so powerful it made you clutch your collar and roll your eyeballs back into your brain). He peered in wonder at the glistening naked bodies of the men working by oil lamps to gut and salt these silvery Himalayas of fish but the next moment again the Pontiac had transformed itself into a stately barge forging it way over a smoky, azure river … Here and there Chinese waded head and shoulders above the blue billows, which presently grew transparent and correspondingly thickened into a darker blue empyrean hanging a few feet overhead; through this blue canopy, like cherubim, disembodied Chinese heads peered down from balconies at the Pontiac making its slow progress beneath.