“I’m all right,” sulked Boothby. He leaned his elbows on the table and yawned. “Awwwwwwww!”
“I have long wished to know, Mr. Boothby,” said Inche Abu Zakaria, “whether that is perhaps an ailment. I have often felt pity for you because of it. It is perhaps a disease of which I have read called the gapes.”
“That is a disease of poultry,” said Mr. Gervase Michael. “We had chickens which had it badly. I forget now how it was cured. One chicken certainly we lost.”
“Mr. Boothby is no chicken,” said Gora Singh, the life and soul of the party. “Ha ha.” He tore into the sweet-and-sour prawns, taking Boothby’s share as well as his own.
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” said Boothby. “Unless perhaps someone’s trying to be funny.”
Gora Singh suddenly roared with grey-bearded laughter. He put down his fork and said, “Ha ha ha, a crab is a fish, Mr. Crabbe. I have just thought of it. Ha ha ha. That is very funny. Mr. Boothby will come out in spots, Mr. Crabbe, if he tries to devour you. Ha ha ha, that is very funny.” He explained the joke in Malay to Haji Mohamed Noor. It took a long time, and, when it was evident that the Haji would never grasp the point, the next course had arrived.
“Look here,” said Boothby, “is this a put-up job, or something? Don’t I get anything to eat at all?”
“I can assure you, Mr. Boothby,” said Mr. Roper, “that we knew nothing of your being allergic to fish. When I was deputed to arrange this dinner I merely told the management here to give us a varied Chinese meal. That they have, so far, done. I am sorry you cannot eat fish.” He then gracefully scooped himself a portion of the ikan merah which lay, covered with cucumber, in a shallow pool of sauce.
“Yin,” said Mr. Raj.
The next dish was an innocuous mess of fried vegetables. Boothby ate greedily and then began to hiccough.
“One should hold the breath and take many sips of water,” suggested Inche Jamaluddin.
“A sudden shock is best,” said Hung. “A blow between the shoulders.”
“Or between the eyes,” said Crabbe, “like this.” He took from his jacket-pocket the winning lottery-ticket. “Examine the number, gentlemen.”
“So it was your ticket! Well!”
“I had heard it was a policeman in the town.”
“A man in Kelapa, I was told.”
“Well, this is most surprising.”
“To think it was Mr. Crabbe.”
“Secretive about it, weren’t you?” said Solomons.
“Too right you were.”
“Well.”
“Mr. Crabbe.”
“A very, very rich man.”
It cured Boothby’s hiccoughs.
“Now,” said Crabbe, “I can go back to England whenever I like. I can expose many things in the Press. I can perhaps even ruin a few careers. This represents a lot of money. Money is power.”
“You could start a school.”
“On the most scientific pedagogical principles,” said Mr. Raj.
“You could travel the world.”
“You need never work again.”
“Well.”
“To think it was Mr. Crabbe all the time.”
Everybody was too excited to be much interested in the next course. Everybody except Boothby. Boothby banged his fist on the table and said:
“The lot of you! The whole bloody lot of you! You’ve all worked against me! You’ve all tried to ruin me! But just wait, that’s all, just wait. I’ll get the whole bloody lot of you if it’s the last thing I do. Stop talking!” he yelled to Gora Singh. “When I’m bloody well talking you’ll kindly shut up. I’m still Headmaster!”
“I was translating for the Haji’s benefit,” said Gora Singh. “And you will not speak to me in that manner.”
“I’ll speak as I bloody well like!”
“Boothby,” said Crabbe, “you’ve had it. Sit down and eat your nice fish.”
Boothby screamed, picked up a large dish of fried rice garnished with shrimps, and then hurled it at Crabbe. He missed and struck a fly-blown picture of Sun Yat Sen.
Then they heard steady chanting from below.
“It’s the seniors,” said Mr. Roper, turning round in his chair to look down from the window.
“I’ll get them too,” raved Boothby. “They’re all in it. Who gave them permission to be out, eh? Who gave them permission?”
“It’s end of term,” said Crichton.
The words of the chant were discernible.
“We want Crabbe! We want Crabbe! We want Crabbe!”
Boothby, red hair all anyhow, turned in triumph. “You see, you bastard. You didn’t get away with it. They want you. God help you if they get you.”
“We want Crabbe!”
“You see!” Boothby grinned horribly. Then a single voice was raised from below, cutting clearly through the chant:
“Crabbe for Headmaster!”
Raggedly the cry was taken up. There were cheers, and then:
“Crabbe for Head! Crabbe for Head!”
Boothby shook his fists, standing at the stair-head. “Rotten to the core! Treachery and corruption! Just you wait, that’s all, just you wait!” Then, gasping for breath, he began to stamp down the stairs. They heard him stumble and swear half-way down. Then he could be heard stamping out the back way, seeking his car.
“Now we can finish our dinner,” said Gora Singh. “It was as well he did not stay. The other two courses are also fish. Though, of course, there is ice-cream.”
“Crabbe for Head!”
The noise of angry gears and a fretful engine. Boothby was going home. The car sang into the distance.
“Before you start thinking me mean for not ordering champagne and cigars,” said Crabbe, “I’d better say now that I didn’t really win the lottery. It was just a cure for hiccoughs.”
“I thought that was not the winning number.”
“Yes, I know the number well.”
“I knew all the time it was a joke. Ha ha ha.”
“It was very clever.”
“It was obvious,” said Mr. Raj. “You are not the type of person who would ever win a great fortune. You are not a lucky person. It is evident from your face.”
“Crabbe for Head!” A little desultory now, a little liturgical.
“Well, that’s a relief,” said Crichton. “If you don’t mind my saying so.”
“It made him very angry.”
“That was the intention.”
“Ha ha. A very good joke.”
‘So Mr. Crabbe is a poor man again.”
“He will deign to finish this simple fare and wash it down with nothing more Lucullan than beer.”
“Well,” said somebody. “Poor Boothby. Nobody could say he went out like a lamb.”
“He was only an imitation lion,” said Mr. Raj. “His teeth were false and his claws were made of cardboard. I feel very sorry for him.”
“He was not a bad Headmaster,” said Inche Jamaluddin, “as Headmasters go. In twenty years at the Mansor School I have known many far worse.”
“He lost his temper too much.”
“He yawned all the time.”
“The British,” said Mr. Raj, “have done heroic work in the tropics. When one considers how temperate and gentle is their northern island …”
“Islands,” corrected MacNeice.
“…one marvels at their fundamental strength of will. The time is coming for them to leave the East. At least, the time is coming for those who will not be absorbed. One cannot fight against the jungle or the sun. To resist is to invite madness. Mr. Boothby is mad. It is a great pity. If he had stayed at home …”
“Crabbe for Head!”
“Close the window,” said Crabbe. “We can switch on the other fan.”
“They are going now,” said Mr. Roper. “Their exuberance does not last very long.”
“If he had stayed at home he would have been a decent little schoolmaster. He has had too much
power. In a few years he will retire and then he will drag on his empty life, freed by an adequate pension from the need to work. But he will be recognisably mad. People will laugh at him and not wish to play golf or tennis with him. And he will bore people with his unintelligible talk about a country he could never learn to understand. It is a pity. His life has been ruined.”
“And will my life be ruined too?” asked Crabbe.
“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Raj calmly. “But with you it will not be a pity. The country will absorb you and you will cease to be Victor Crabbe. You will less and less find it possible to do the work for which you were sent here. You I lose function and identity. You will be swallowed up and become another kind of eccentric. You may become a Muslim. You may forget your English, or at least lose your English accent. You may end in a kampong, no longer a foreigner, an old brownish man with many wives and children, one of the elders whom the young will be encouraged to consult on matters of the heart. You will be ruined.”
“Crabbe for Head!” A few straggling voices, already losing interest.
“That cry is your death-warrant,” said Mr. Raj. “The proletariat is always wrong.”
The rain began to come down heavily. The ants flew into the electric lamp. Sweat gleamed on brown and white and yellow foreheads. Mosquitoes began to nip thin-socked or bare ankles. There were no more voices calling from below.
“To-morrow,” said Mr. Raj, “we shall awaken to a flooded world.”
16
SERGEANT ALLADAD KHAN, the three new brass chevrons not glittering at all in the dull rainy light, came back by river from the workshops at Kelapa. He was erect in the stem of the police launch and Kassim was at the wheel, unhandy as ever. Allah, the world was all river now. The river had thirstily engulfed much of the main street, all the dirty lanes by the bazaar, had even climbed up the stone steps of the old Residency, virtually marooning the Crabbes. Tree-tops rose bushily from the grey sheets of water, and snakes were lodging in the branches. An old Chinese man had stood by his housedoor to pray the flood away from his family; he had been carried off by a crocodile. Old boats had capsized or been sucked down—the seams uncaulked—loaded with household chattels. These were bad but thrilling days. For here was he, Alladad Khan, chugging back to the swilling yard of the Transport Office, riding the flood like the Prophet Noah, lord of the river, granted the freedom of the waters. Allah, there was something more dignified, more befitting a man, about this stately progress than the rasping of brakes and jerking of gears on the dusty jostling road.
Lord of the river but of little more. For she had soon learned, as women will, to adjust herself to her brother’s defection and treacherously-acquired prosperity. Was it not evident that his career would be advanced by this cunning marriage? For he was meeting all the best people now, and—as for his wife—obviously so good a Muslim would bring her in time to the true faith. His drinking was a sort of self-elected martyrdom, a mere means to gaining greater strength through the right social contacts. Abdul Khan had told her so himself.
As for her attitude to him, Alladad Khan—well, it was much the same as before. Except that she was quite pleased with his promotion, proud of his wound in the arm, and soothed with the presents he had been able to buy her with money given freely and generously by Adams Sahib. And he, Alladad Khan, had decided that the child was not unlike himself—an unaggressive nose, an intelligent forehead, eyes both lively and melting. The child he dandled now in his arms, singing old songs of the Punjab, and she approved of the fond fatherliness he evinced. She let him go out occasionally and did not complain overmuch if he returned with bright eyes and rollin gait. One thing she still would not allow was that horribl erotic act which was a commonplace of American an European films, but she took complaisantly enough now to his other husbandly advances.
It was as well, thought Alladad Khan, that he construct something on which to rejoice, for soon he would be losing his friends. The first week after Christmas the Crabbe would be flying to another State; a month later Adam Sahib would be leaving the Federation for ever. He, Allad ad Khan, would be alone. Perhaps, however, he could ensure against being completely alone by cultivating the few roods of garden wished upon him. He would try to love his wife, he would protect and cherish his daughter, he would continue to learn English, he would have a shelf of books and a few pictures on the walls. Perhaps some day he would have a son, and, when he retired to the Punjab, there would be a few acres and cows and horses and a vista of progeny carrying in its head, retailing round the winter fire, the legends of him, Alladad Khan—soldier, dreamer, policeman, cosmopolitan, cultivated, free-thinking. It was not much, but it was something.
She would wish the son to be called Abdul Khan, but there he would most definitely put his foot down.
Alladad Khan was interested to note that, in the sparse speedy river traffic, a boat careered gaily along containing a raja and the raja’s new mistress. The raja was a young dissipated man in a European suit; Alladad Khan knew him well by sight. The girl he knew even better. She had formerly been the mistress of Victor Crabbe. Now she seemed happy enough with her smart baju and slinky sarong, her gold-studded handbag, her ear-rings of Kelantan silver, her dissipated but probably virile young raja. Allah, women had no faith.
None except one.
And at Kelapa he had seen that faithless boy, tittering around, the minion of a paunched planter. In the store by the workshops he had seen him, buying food for the bungalow, but also spending wild money on gaudy trinkets and childish toys—a doll’s house lavatory, a jack-in-the-box, paper flowers and wax fruit. He had moved provocative girlish shoulders at Alladad Khan and tossed his tinted hair. The world was speedboat-speeding to its final collapse. Friends go and women and boys are faithless and God may not exist. There remains the flat in the Police Barracks, however, and in it a long-nosed wife with cannibal teeth, a baby, a bed, chapattis hissing and jumping on the stove.
And things one likes to remember.
“Kassim!” he shouted. “Bloody fool! Silly bastard!” For Kassim was gloomily steering straight for the yard wall by the Transport Office, speed unslackened, the boat’s nose ready for a bullet impact with red brick. Alladad Khan took control.
“Minta ma’af, Corporal,” said Kassim.
“Sergeant,” corrected Alladad Khan, “sergeant. Allah, will you never learn? Three stripes is sergeant.”
“I have much on my mind.” said Kassim. “There is my new wife and the money is difficult. I should be glad to be merely a corporal.”
“Promotion comes when one has proved one’s ability.”
“But that is not fair. You have but one wife and you do not need all the money you have as a sergeant. I have three wives now and it is very hard.”
“Hari Singh has been promised the rank of corporal. Admittedly, he has as little ability in matters of transport as yourself, but he at least knows some English and plays football for the Police Circle.”
“I never have time for these things, Corporal.”
“There is no God but Allah,” swore Alladad Khan. “Will you never learn?”
“But I have no opportunity to go to the evening classes. There seems always so much to do in the house.”
“We will say no more,” said Alladad Khan, alighting to tread some inches of flood-water. “Wait here. The tuan and myself must go out together soon to the big schoolhouse on the hill. You must be ready to take much barang on board. To-day is a big day with the Christians. It is called Christmas Eve. They celebrate the birth of the Prophet Isa.”
“That is why there is a free day to-morrow.”
“Yes. And the day after. I beseech you to do as little as possible in the house. We shall require you to be fit and eager for the resumption of work. Take your wives for a trip on the river. You are reaching an age when energy must be conserved.”
“Yes, Corporal,” said Kassim.
17
THE EVENING OF the eve of Christmas promised to bloom and fade lovely over
the waters. Warm light shot through the rainy western cloud, catching the hair of the jungle and irradiating the misty wreaths on the mountain-tops. Crabbe and his wife stood high above the town, having climbed to the roof of the crumbling watch-tower to look at the streets of water, the huge swollen river, the craft gliding or chuffing upon it. Even below, beyond the highest flight of stone stairs, little boats bobbed and rode. In one of them was a recognisable figure, being rowed home. Crabbe waved and the figure waved back in high laughter that rang faintly over the wet waste.
“Misti lulus! He he he he!”
Then, still waving and tittering, he was borne away to wife and seven children and the roof of his tiny flooded home.
“Christmas Eve,” said Fenella. “Cold streets and warm pubs and all the children excited. Camaraderie for a brief unreal space, toasts and back-slappings. For something they don’t even understand, let alone believe in. And the carols.” She began to sing, unmusically, in a badly pitched key:
“The holly and the ivy,
When they are both full-grown,
Of all the trees …”
Then she put her face in her hands and sobbed. Crabbe comforted her.
“It means nothing here,” he said. “This is the land of a later prophet. But, whoever he was, he could have been born here more fittingly than amid fancied winter snow. The towkays hoicking at the kampong couple, the children staring up from the monsoon drains—though that’s not possible now, of course—and the search for a room in a Chinese hotel. And then the limbu in the Sikh stable and the birth in the smell of dung.”
“I can’t help it,” said Fenella, wiping her eyes. “It’s always the same. Something to do with lost innocence, I suppose.”
The swift twilight began to run like a fishing-line off a reel. From below came an approaching chugging and then a hail:
“Ahoy!”
Crabbe and Fenella looked down to see a launch mooring by the steps, a huge man talking petulantly in Urdu, several crates, the craft overweighted.
The Malayan Trilogy Page 19
