The Empire Trilogy (157 page)

‘I'm afraid, sir,' replied Ehrendorf in a neutral tone, ‘that in such a complex matter …' And he shrugged diffidently.

But the Brigadier was enjoying himself. ‘Come, come … No need to be bashful, Captain.'

And he stared at Ehrendorf sardonically while the other officers grew quiet waiting to see how he would deal with the situation. This was by no means the first time they had seen the Brigadier making sport of a newcomer. But Ehrendorf replied unruffled: ‘If you really want to know what I think, sir, it's this … I think the 11th Division is in serious trouble if it stays where it is, that it should have been withdrawn from Jitra this morning by a competent commander in full possession of the facts, and that it must, at any rate, be withdrawn now before the main Jap attack and preferably behind a river wide enough to stop their tanks. Surely, sir, nobody is in any doubt about that?' And he gazed with equanimity at the Brigadier.

Gradually, despite the temperature, the glistening brows and necks, and the sweat-darkened shirts of the officers sitting round the table, the atmosphere grew chilly in the room. It was felt that Ehrendorf, who had been not only tolerated but treated rather well during this long day of battle, which had been felt no less keenly at 111 Corps HQ than at Jitra two hundred and fifty miles away, had displayed ingratitude by this low assessment of their efforts. They waited for the reply which would put this brash, too-clever-by-half American in his place. They waited and watched and, in due course, the Brigadier's lower lip climbed towards his nose and moistened his neatly-clipped moustache. Whether, given time, he would have made any other reply it was impossible to say, because at this moment news came that Malaya Command had authorized Murray-Lyon to disengage and withdraw behind the Kedah River. And most likely he would do so tonight under cover of darkness.

‘Thank God for that!' said Ehrendorf, smiling bleakly at his companions. The battle of Jitra was over but at least the 11th Division had been saved. This might be a good time, if it were not raining, to take a stroll in the fresh air before the Second Law, eating away steadily like worm in the rafters, brought another section of the roof crashing down.

‘Cheong, what thing trouble?'

Even the Major, by no means the most observant of men, could not have failed to take note of the Chinese servant's deep sighs and of the glances of despair he dispensed to right and left as he went about his duties. Moreover, Cheong was the last person to make a fuss unnecessarily. ‘Cheong, blong what thing trouble?' the Major insisted.

‘My too much fear,' said Cheong grimly. ‘Japanese just now catch Penang.'

‘Nonsense, Cheong,' exclaimed the Major, relieved to hear that Cheong's worries were of such a chimerical nature. ‘Japanese this fashion no can. This blong fool pidgin.'

But the servant did not seemed reassured. ‘S'pose Japanese catch Penang, tomollow maybe catch Singapore! Japanese pay Blitish too much lose face!' And shaking his head sadly he marched off to the kitchen refusing all comfort.

‘Cheong has some story about Penang falling to the Japanese,' the Major informed Matthew later in the morning. ‘I don't know where he's got it from. But once these absurd rumours start buzzing around one finds that even a sensible chap like him is believing them. Nothing could be worse for the morale of the Asiatics than this sort of thing. Besides, where would he have got the news even if it
were
true?' the Major added a trifle uneasily. ‘There's been nothing in the papers about the Japs being anywhere near Penang.' Undoubtedly the whole thing was nonsense and the Major now regretted even mentioning it to Matthew who looked depressed enough already. ‘Are you all right?' he asked. For the past three or four days Matthew had been sitting listlessly at his desk, haggard, unwashed, unshaven, the very picture of despair. He no longer ate anything. He was growing thin. Even his appetite for the rubber business had disappeared. At first, when he had still been expecting a visit from Vera Chiang, life had seemed capable of striking one or two sparks of interest from the dull succession of hours. But as the days went by and there was no sign of her he had relapsed into apathy.

What did it matter? he wondered, scratching his itchy scalp. She was beautiful, certainly, but so what? Even the idea of being married to a beautiful woman like Miss Chiang which had once seemed to him a delightful and tempting fantasy had lost its appeal. Was there any point in possessing a beautiful woman all to oneself? The answer was: no, not really. For, after all, he reasoned, having the proprietorial rights over a woman that a husband has over his wife or that a lover has over his mistress
does not actually get you any further forward
! For, unless you are the sort of Mohammedan who keeps his wife heavily veiled, her beauty is scarcely less available to casual passers-by in the street than it is to you, whose job it is to foot the bill for her food, lodging and general maintenance. True, the husband or lover has the added gratification of a range of intimacies usually denied to the passer-by. But look here! The effect produced by a beautiful woman is
visual
… touching her does not bring you any closer to her beauty than touching the paint of a Botticelli brings you closer to the beauty of his painting. It might even be argued that the closer you get to this painting or this woman the less you are able to appreciate its or her beauty, or even what makes each different from others of its kind. In the most intimate position of all, with your eyeball, so to speak, resting against the paint itself you would be hard put to it to tell any difference at all between this one and another. What had happened in the case of beautiful women, Matthew reflected, was that lust and aesthetic pleasure had got hopelessly mixed up. As a result, men felt obliged to marry beautiful women when in many cases they would have been better advised to marry a plain woman with a pleasant disposition and acquire, perhaps, some compensatingly beautiful object such as a piece of T'ang porcelain.

Matthew tried to engage the Major in conversation on the nature of feminine beauty. Very likely the Major had had more practical experience in these matters than he had. But the Major was distraught and plainly found it hard to give his full attention to disentangling the lustful from the aesthetic. The Major did try to cheer Matthew up, though, explaining to him that depression was bound to follow such a fever, never failed to do so. Matthew, unshaven, had taken to sitting all day with his feet on his father's desk, spinning the chamber of a revolver he had found in one of its drawers.

‘A young man like you should think of getting married, you know,' said the Major who found the appearance of the revolver disquieting.

‘Well, you never got married yourself, did you, Major?' asked Matthew accusingly.

‘Ouf, well, no, I suppose not,' agreed the Major, taken aback by this frontal assault. ‘Just between you and me, though, there have been moments when I've rather regretted it, just now and then, you know. After all, when all's said and done …' The Major lapsed into silence and at the same time felt himself invaded by loneliness and despair, so that the muscles of his face which was still wearing a cheerful expression began to ache with the effort of holding the expression in place and, severely pruned though it was, the moustache on his upper lip felt as heavy as antlers. ‘Anyway,' he said at last, ‘if you don't want to get married I think it might be a good idea to mention it to the Blacketts in the not-too-distant future.'

Matthew could see that there was something in what the Major said. Monty had dropped in the previous afternoon, explaining that he had had to escape from his family whose conversation these days was limited to talk of wedding arrangements. Nor was it simply ‘bridesmaids and all that rubbish'; now, a prey to this new and, in Monty's opinion, sickening obsession, his family really had ‘the bit between their teeth' … There was endless talk of recipes for wedding-cakes, of patterns of wedding-dresses and of printers who would have to be consulted about suitable invitation cards. ‘They really have it in for you, old boy,' Monty had warned him. ‘Mark my words!'

‘But I don't think I even said I wanted to marry her,' protested Matthew apathetically. ‘I mean, good gracious …'

It was true, he really must do something about it but just at the moment he felt he could not quite face having it out with the Blacketts. And, after all, why not get married? Matthew wondered, grimly scratching his itchy scalp with the barrel of the revolver. After all, it is what everybody does. He was thirty-three, no longer a young man, really. All his Oxford friends and contemporaries except Ehrendorf were long since married and many of them had swarms of children into the bargain. His life certainly had not amounted to much so far: he might as well settle for reproducing himself like everyone else … at least that would be
something
. For a while, during his early optimistic years in Geneva pacing the deck of the League of Nations, he had believed he was playing a part, minuscule certainly but worthwhile none the less, in steering that great ship towards a hopeful shore. But then, torpedoed by the Axis Powers one after another, the League had sunk leaving merely a patch of oil and a few spars. The fact was that since the League had gone down, Matthew had been in a muddle; he had found it hard to bring himself to abandon ship, sunk though it was.

But sooner or later one must face reality. One must lay a solid foundation for one's life. The League had been like a pleasant collective fantasy of mankind, dreaming of a better life for itself the way a tramp asleep in a hedge might dream of living in a mansion. Yes, why should he not get married to Joan and begin to live a more practical sort of life? One must make up one's mind in the long run. And Matthew sighed, dejectedly scratching his ear with the revolver and pulling the trigger as he did so. The click caused the Major to start violently. ‘I'll go over and see the Blacketts later on,' said Matthew in a more resolute tone, taking his feet off the desk, putting down the revolver and sitting up straight.

On his way to the Blacketts' compound Matthew paused on its threshold in the green antechamber lit with rare tropical flowers. Here, on his way to propose marriage to Joan (a spurious proposal, if Monty was to be believed, since she appeared to think it had already been made), standing beside the African mallow and crêpe myrtle, cassia and rambutan, Matthew suddenly found himself captured like a bird in a net by the heavy perfumes that wavered invisibly over the dripping leaves and glistening flowers. And while he was still lingering there to sniff and marvel at the new sensations which were flooding into his mind, one, two, three butterflies, astonishingly beautiful and of a kind he had never seen before with pink and yellow on their wings and long, trailing tails like kites came fluttering around him, as if they had taken a liking to his freshly ironed linen suit and were considering settling on it. He watched them, filled with wonder, noticing how the beat of their wings, slower than that of European butterflies, made them rise and fall as if in slow motion, and swoop and glide almost like birds. And presently these three butterflies, which had finally decided to forsake the elegant suit in which Matthew was going to make his proposal for the scarlet flowers of the Indian coral tree, were joined by a fourth, even more beautiful and languorous in flight, and larger, too, with black and white embroidered wings which suggested the scribbles of the batik shirts he had seen the Malays wearing. This butterfly Matthew was tentatively able to identify, thanks to a manual the Major had lent him while he was convalescent, as a Common Tree Nymph.

To have a profound spiritual or sensual experience, he was thinking as he strode on into the corridor of white-flowered pili nut trees, one must rupture one's old habits of feeling. That was it, exactly … and that was what he would be doing by marrying Joan. You have to burst through the skin of your old life which surrounds you the way a bladder of skin surrounds the meat and oatmeal of a haggis! He paused on the white colonnaded steps which led up to the Blacketts' house, pleased to find himself in such a positive frame of mind at this important moment of his life. Then, straightening his shoulders, he plunged into the shade of the verandah in search of Joan.

Inside, however, he found himself unexpectedly baulked. Miss Blackett was not at home, though she was expected back shortly. Would Mr Webb wait for her in the drawing-room? Matthew surveyed the old Malay servant, Abdul, feeling some of his resolution draining away: the old man's eyes, dim and watery with age, were expressionless. Matthew said he would wait and was shown into the drawing-room. It was cool in here and a great stillness prevailed. A patch of whiteness stirred on the white sofa and Matthew recognized a friend; Ming Toy, Kate's Siamese cat was taking its afternoon nap in the coolest and quietest room it could find. Matthew went to sit down beside it, feeling in his pocket for a letter the Major had handed to him as he was on his way out. He opened it: it contained only a photograph. Matthew gazed at it, moved, for it was a photograph he remembered having seen once before, years ago, when he and Ehrendorf had been at Oxford together.

They had been taking an evening stroll by the Cherwell, he remembered, towards the end of their last summer term. It was one of those hushed, damp, rather chilly June evenings that seem to go on for ever before darkness falls. The knowledge that they would soon be coming to the end of this phase of their life, saying goodbye to friends and launching out into careers that were still barely imaginable, had cast an air of melancholy over them. There had been a smell of damp grass, perhaps the flutter of a water-hen in the thicket overhanging the river bank. Ehrendorf had been saying how he felt he had changed during the time he had spent in Europe, how difficult he believed he would find it returning to his home town in America. ‘Why don't you stay here then?' Matthew had asked. Ehrendorf had handed him the photograph then, saying with a smile: ‘My brothers and sisters. They'd never understand if I didn't go back.'