Singapore Grip - J. G. Farrell [10]
Only too glad would Walter have been if events had proved him wrong, if the fatal vegetarian flaw had not brought about the tragedy he feared. But this was not to be. One of Mr Webb’s visits to England had coincided with the General Strike of 1926. Matthew had been a student at Oxford at the time. While his fellow undergraduates had poured cheerfully out of their colleges to lend a hand in breaking the strike Matthew had skulked in his room ‘sporting his oak’ (Walter understood this to be university jargon for ‘keeping his door shut’). Despite the shut door Mr Webb had argued with his son. Very likely the word ‘patriotism’ had been mentioned.
Walter had received no first-hand account of the meeting but somehow he pictured Mr Webb standing on the lawn of Brasenose College holding up fistfuls of white hair to the icy wind that howled through the quad, while dismal dons, looking up from their books, surveyed this representative of suffering humanity with distaste from leaded casements. He understood that after wandering about for a day or two the old chap had offered his own services as a tram-conductor. They had been refused, of course. No matter how enthusiastic he might be, for the serious business of collecting fares and clubbing trouble-makers off the rear platform he was much too frail. He had retired to Singapore then, having watched the strike collapse without his son’s assistance.
At one time it had been understood that Matthew would take his place in the firm one day. But after 1926 this was no longer discussed. Matthew’s mother had died suddenly in 1930 and Matthew himself had seldom been mentioned after that. He was known to be living in Geneva where he had some job connected with the League of Nations. And that, reflected Walter, given the poor boy’s peculiar education, is about what one might have expected! Old Mr Webb was still alive, by the way, and on certain social occasions he could still be seen in Walter’s garden or drawing-room, looking no less upright and dignified than the old gentleman in the portrait which Walter had just been contemplating. ‘Matthew and Joan … what a shame indeed. It would have suited the firm nicely.’ And with a sigh Walter went to look for his wife who had retired to her room with a pencil and a piece of paper, determined to break the code in which Joan had taken to writing her diary.
Never in her life had Mrs Blackett subjected herself to such mental effort as she did during the next few days in her attempt to make sense of those mysteriously jumbled letters. She tried everything she could think of, she pummelled her brain with one theory after another, she covered the floor of her bedroom with crumpled pieces of paper, she grew thin and haggard, but still without result. At last, however, as she sat defeated in front of her dressing-table gazing at her hollow-eyed reflection and still with a line of Joan’s fiendish code gripped in her fingers, chance came to her rescue: she dropped her eyes to the reflection of the paper and found that she could read it without difficulty! It was the simplest of all codes used by children: mirror-writing. She searched feverishly for the other coded sentences she had copied from Joan’s diary and held them to the mirror, her lips working … There was a knock on the door and Walter came in, looking sombre.
‘He’s not a Hungarian!’ cried Mrs Blackett. ‘He’s a …’
‘A Brazilian, I know. It’s even worse.’
‘Walter, how do you know?’
‘I just asked Joan. What’s more, I have a feeling that this time it may be more serious.’
Walter was beginning to think that although difficulties of this sort were in the natural order of things and were such as any family with growing daughters has to expect, a Brazilian was going a tiny bit too far. Weary of his wife’s efforts to break Joan’s code he had decided to approach