The Empire Trilogy (158 page)

Matthew was now studying the photograph again. It showed Ehrendorf looking younger, as he had looked at Oxford, but otherwise not much changed. He was tall, handsome, smiling as ever. The absence of a moustache made him look younger, too. He was standing in the middle of the picture looking directly into the lens of the camera: grouped around him was what looked like a brood of dwarfs and hunchbacks, all gazing up reverently at their brother with gargoyle faces.

Well! Matthew still remembered how surprised he had been by the contrast between Ehrendorf and his brothers and sisters: it was as if every virtue and physical grace had been concentrated in him to the detriment of his adoring siblings. And Ehrendorf adored them, too, that was the point … or why else would he have gone back to Kansas City (or wherever it was) when all his interests and the people who understood him were no longer there but in Europe? But in the end Kansas City had not quite managed to claim him … nor Europe either, come to that. Poor Ehrendorf! Thanks to the Rhodes scholarship that had taken him to Oxford the poor fellow had split in two like an amoeba! Half of him had now fetched up in Singapore and had made itself unhappy by falling in love with the English girl whom he, Matthew, was about to marry. Matthew sighed, wondering whether it might not be a better idea to put it off until another time. The last thing he wanted to do was to hurt Ehrendorf's feelings.

While he was considering this he seized Ming Toy and dragged that furry creature nearer; he had been interrupted by Walter on a previous occasion while trying to find out what sex the cat belonged to: this would be a good opportunity to pursue his researches. Ming Toy lay there, still half asleep and unprotesting, while Matthew once again lifted his magnificent tail and inspected his copiously furred hindquarters for some sign of gender. Finding none he picked up a pencil and began to rummage about with it. Ming Toy began to purr.

‘Oh hello …' Walter was standing in the door, giving Matthew a very odd look indeed

‘Oh!' exclaimed Matthew, startled. He hurriedly dropped Ming Toy's tail and shoved him aside, deciding it was probably best not to try to explain. ‘I was just waiting for Joan,' he said, recovering quickly, ‘but perhaps I could have a word with you about this replanting business …'

‘I can only give you five minutes, I'm afraid. Come into my study.'

Matthew had not been in Walter's study before and was somewhat surprised to find that the room had an unused air. Walter himself had the air of a stranger as he looked around: indeed, he seldom used this room, preferring the tranquillity of his dressing-room on the first floor. He was looking impatiently at his watch, so Matthew explained that he thought it was wrong for the rubber companies managed by Blackett and Webb to be replanting healthy trees. Mature trees produced rubber badly needed for the War Effort; replanting them with immature rubber which yielded nothing simply did not make sense.

‘Monty told you, did he, about the excess profits tax? You realize that we make the same “standard” profit whatever we do?'

Matthew nodded.

‘And that replanting expenses are allowable against tax? Yes. Well, I agree that if we were the only people in the rubber industry there would be something in what you say. But alas, we're not. We have rivals and competitors, my dear boy! If we don't replant now with this new high-yielding material, particularly now when there's a clear financial advantage in doing so, while our competitors
do
replant, where shall we be when it reaches maturity? Not on Easy Street, I can tell you! Because we'll find ourselves producing half as much rubber per acre as, say, Langfield and Bowser at the same cost, or perhaps even a higher cost. It simply won't wash, I'm afraid. Now does that answer your objection?'

‘Well, not really, no, Walter,' said Matthew becoming physically restless as he always did when excited but controlling himself as best he could. ‘Because I don't deny the commercial advantage. How could I? I don't know anything about these things. But this is a matter of principle. Your argument is the one that businessmen always use when asked to make some sacrifice in the public interest: “We would like to help but it's out of the question if we are to remain competitive.” The business community in Rangoon said exactly the same thing years ago when asked to make some contribution to the welfare of the coolies who were in the most dreadful state of poverty and dying like flies. But no! Spending money to help those poor devils would have made us vulnerable, Blackett and Webb included … You see, I've been reading about our dealings in the rice trade in my father's papers and frankly … Ah!' he grunted as the cat, which had taken a liking to him and followed them into the study, suddenly sprang into his lap.

‘The fact that an argument is often used, by businessmen or anyone else,' replied Walter calmly, ‘does not unfortunately mean that it is any the less true. Would that it were! As for using all our resources now, as you recommend, for the War Effort and finding ourselves as a nation without any means of support when the war is over, well, I doubt if that is a very good idea. A nation, Matthew, is roughly speaking as strong as it is wealthy. And it's as wealthy as, again roughly speaking, its individual businesses are healthy. And they are healthy only as long as they are able to compete with the industries and firms of other nations in their line of business. If we follow your advice the big Dutch estates in Java and Sumatra (which, incidentally, got on to new clones before we did) will have put us out of business by 1946 or 1947 when their new stock matures.' Walter beamed at Matthew who, for his part, found himself at a loss for words, partly because this was an arguement he had not yet considered, partly because Ming Toy was kneading his trousers in order to test out his (or possibly her) claws, evidently not realizing that Matthew's sensitive skin lay just underneath. Walter got to his feet.

‘But wait, Walter …' Matthew sprang up and the cat, which he had forgotten about, in turn had to spring for its life. Matthew hurried after Walter. ‘It's madness! With the Japs in the north of the country we should be producing every scrap of rubber we can. Who knows but that in a few months they won't have taken over a lot of the estates?' Matthew clapped a hand to his brow as he tried to catch up with Walter. Wait, what was he doing arguing with Walter? He had planned to ask Joan to marry him and here he was instead, arguing with her father.

‘There's no shipping, anyway,' said Walter, scowling for the first time in their discussion. ‘The wharves are packed with rubber already that we have no way of shifting. Well, now I really must be going, old chap. Duty calls. You and Joan are getting along all right, are you?' he called back over his shoulder as he hurried down the steps to where his car was waiting. ‘Come and have supper. Bring the Major, too. We don't dress, as you know.'

‘Well, that was another thing I wanted to … about getting married and so on …' cried Matthew. But Walter, with a final wave, had disappeared into the back of his Bentley and it had moved off.

Matthew sat down on the steps, rather disconsolately. Joan still had not returned. Perhaps this was just as well, for he was by no means sure that he was all that keen on marrying her, after all. It had certainly seemed a good idea earlier in the afternoon, though. Besides, he had gone to the trouble of shaving and putting on a new suit. ‘Perhaps she will refuse,' he thought hopefully; that would settle the matter without his having to make a decision. (But no, there was no chance of her refusing.) He sighed, and for some reason felt as lonely and as unwanted as if she
had
refused him.

Meanwhile, four bright eyes were surveying him from behind a dazzling cascade of bougainvillaea. One pair belonged to Kate Blackett, the other to a friend of Kate's called Melanie Langfield. This Melanie Langfield, who was of an age with Kate, belonged to the detested Langfield family and was, in fact, a grand-daughter of old Solomon Langfield, the mere thought of whom was enough to make the bristles on Walter's spine puff up with loathing. The raid which the two girls had just performed on the larder had been partly foiled by the vigilance of Abdul, the major-domo. Before being discovered, however, they had each managed to get a spoonful of Kate's ‘Radio Malt' and Melanie had had the presence of mind to slip a jar of lemonade crystals into the pocket of her frock. Now she and Kate, hidden by the bougainvillaea, were alternately dipping moistened fingers into the jar and licking off the crystals that stuck to them, enjoying the tingling acid taste on their tongues.

What was a member of the hated Langfield family doing at the Blacketts' house? Kate and Melanie, as it happened, had been sent to the same school in England and neither of them had any other friends of her own age in Singapore. Since neither of their respective sets of parents could be convinced that the other children who abounded in the colony were quite the social equals of their own daughter both families had found themselves in a dilemma. The result was that though the Langfields and the Blacketts did not for a moment cease to speak ill of each other or to detest each other any the less heartily, they did sometimes grudgingly agree to the smaller children playing together ‘unofficially'. This was fortunate because otherwise Kate and Melanie might have had to spend their childhood totally immured, as so many unhappy children do, behind their parents' snobbery. Kate and Melanie would be allowed to be friends for as long as they could be thought of as ‘children'; in just such a way Monty and Joan had been allowed when small to play with little Langfields they would now scarcely acknowledge in the street even if the rickshaws they were travelling in happened to pull up alongside each other at a traffic light. Thanks to this fiction that a child did not exist or, at worst, like an immature wasp had not yet grown its sting, Walter could even, and often did, reach out a paternal hand to fondle Melanie's charming blonde curls and without suffering any ill effects whatsoever. But if you had insisted on telling him that this was not a child but a
Langfield
he would certainly have sprung back in horror. He would have been as likely then to stroke the slimy head of a toad as little Melanie's curls.

Melanie, as it happened, was a pale little creature who looked younger than Kate though they were the same age. But her pallor concealed a powerful personality and a restless inventor of schemes. As for obeying rules, at school she had more than once spat in the eye of authority (she had practised spitting in the garden in Singapore). Rules were made to be broken, in Melanie's view. Yes, Langfield blood ran in her veins all right; if Walter could have read her school report he would have been in no doubt about that. But perhaps she had mellowed a little, had she not, in the course of the past few months as her body began the upsetting change from that of a child to that of a woman? Well, no, not really, no, she had not mellowed at all. All that had happened was that her preoccupations had begun to change, and Kate's with them: both girls had become more curious about
men
. A few months earlier those four eyes observing Matthew would have passed over him without really noticing him, as over a potted plant or a chest of drawers. But now they remained on him attentively as he sat on the steps with his head in his hands.

‘Darling, whatever is the matter with the Human Bean?'

‘Darling, I haven't the faintest.'

‘Haven't you, darling? Let's go and ask him.'

Matthew was quite glad to see the girls, though surprised that Kate, who usually called him ‘Matthew' should call him ‘My dear darling Human Bean'. When she had introduced him to her dearest friend in the whole world, Melanie, he asked her to explain and she told him how Ehrendorf had called him a ‘wonderful human bean'. ‘Ah, poor Ehrendorf,' he thought. ‘Where is he now, I wonder?'

While this was being settled Melanie's eyes had been examining Matthew's face in a way which was every bit as calculating as one might have expected even of a senior Langfield. And now she had a suggestion which to Kate seemed staggering in its audacity: the Human Bean should take them to the cinema! This was daring: neither girl was allowed to go to the cinema until she had forced her way through a veritable thicket of preconditions: an eternity of good behaviour was demanded, not to mention school reports which were favourable almost to the point of fawning … and, most thorny of all, a preliminary inspection of the film by an adult member of the family.

But if Melanie's first suggestion was daring, her second was breathtaking in its temerity. For, fixing her bright, unblinking eyes on Matthew's face like a lizard watching a moth, she added: ‘We want to go and see Robert Taylor in
Waterloo Bridge
.' Kate grew very tense; she held her breath and her heart began to pound. She had difficulty in preventing herself from gasping at this.
Waterloo Bridge
was a picture for grown-ups. It would never have qualified as suitable in a million years! It spoke (so they had been told by Mrs Langfield's Irish maid) of intimate and romantic relations between men and women. It was about all
that
sort of thing (for Kate ‘all that sort of thing' was a churning vat of dark and still mysterious experience from beneath whose tap-tapping lid there issued an occasional whiff of intoxicating steam). She suddenly began to feel rather sick with excitement and dread. One moment it had been an ordinary, rather boring afternoon, the next she was walking along the edge of a dizzy precipice with the gravel crumbling from under her feet.

Matthew, meanwhile, was looking rather bemused, like someone who has just been roused from a heavy afternoon nap. He looked vaguely at his watch, shook his wrist and looked at it again. But it was working, after all.

‘Go on, be a sport,' said Melanie. ‘We could go to the four o'clock show and be back for supper,' she added persuasively.

‘No one would know,' put in Kate, and received a vicious, warning pinch from Melanie: she would arouse the Bean's suspicions by making stupid remarks like that.