Singapore Grip - J. G. Farrell [102]
‘Really, you can’t expect me to put up with this,’ said Ehrendorf suddenly.
‘Well, clear off then! Nobody invited you, anyway.’
‘As it happens, Matthew did.’
‘Frankly,’ said Monty, pushing away his empty plate and selecting a toothpick, ‘I don’t think it matters a bugger whether they work as coolies or anything else so long as they have jobs. That’s precisely what they don’t have in South China and India. They come here because they think it’s better, and they’re damn right. It is.’
‘I thought you said you were going. If so, what’re you waiting for?’
‘That’s just what you’d like, isn’t it?’
‘Monty, surely we have a responsibility,’ went on Matthew doggedly, ‘to the people living here when we arrived; even more so to those we encouraged to come and work on the estates. One of the most astounding things about our Empire, when you come to think about it, is the way we’ve transported vast populations across the globe as cheap labour. Surely we must have their interests at heart, at least to some extent, as well as our own. Otherwise it’s not much better than the slave trade.’
‘We do have their interests at heart: we’re giving them employment which they didn’t have where they came from. Besides, almost half our rubber in Malaya is produced by Asiatic smallholders, people who probably came here originally as coolies and then set up in business for themselves. They produce pretty piss-awful rubber but that’s their business.’
‘Let’s go and dance,’ said Joan. ‘Monty, pay the bill and let’s go.’
Monty summoned the waiter and produced a roll of blue dollar bills, saying: ‘Without British capital there wouldn’t have been any rubber business.’
‘But don’t you think, given the huge returns on money invested in Malaya that something more should be done for the people who actually do the work on the plantations to produce it …? Otherwise, the British Empire is nothing more than a vast business concern …’ But Matthew’s last words, though intended for his companions, had been transformed into a soliloquy by their sudden departure, Joan in the lead, Ehrendorf striving to walk beside her and speak to her, and the burly figure of Monty not far behind. Matthew hurried after them, nudging his glasses up on his nose.
As they approached The Great World’s dance-hall the atmosphere seemed to thicken, as if the very dust which hung in the air was quivering with the percussion of drums and wailing of saxophones. Monty dropped back for a moment, indicating that he had something he wanted to say to Matthew. No, it wasn’t about the colonial question, he muttered confidentially, it was more of a proposition he wanted to make. He’d thought it over quite a bit and consulted his two chums who were also very, very interested (that went without saying, actually, because in its way this was a bargain such as one didn’t often come across and so of course they would be interested) and, well, the upshot of it was that he and his two chums had decided unanimously to invite Matthew to join them in … the point being that he was a chap from the same sort of background as they were, a factor one had to bear in mind in a place like Singapore where gossip got around in no time … anyway, in short, they’d decided that Matthew should be given the opportunity of making up the fourth … No, nothing like that, he hated all card-games himself, couldn’t abide them, in fact, well … in a nutshell, instead of risking heaven knows what dreadful diseases with the sort of women one was likely to pick up here at The World or anywhere else in Singapore he and his chums had decided to club together and they’d found a very nice Chinese girl called Sally who had her own flat in Bukit Timah. She was clean and not the kind who’d get drunk or make a fuss. She was …
‘Oh, but really, Monty…’
‘No, just listen a moment. You aren’t a bad sort of bloke, Matthew, in your way (in fact, I quite like you), but you’re the sort of chap who rejects things out of hand without even listening and weighing up the pros and cons.