Singapore Grip - J. G. Farrell [110]
While Matthew, who had sprung up from the couch again and was striding up and down the room making the floorboards creak, had been discoursing the Indian had reappeared with two bottles of beer with straws in them. He looked unsurprised to find one of his customers striding up and down shouting; odd behaviour was by no means unusual under his roof, but he was inclined to take it philosophically, reflecting that every profession must have its disadvantages. He handed one bottle to Monty and the other to Matthew who took it without noticing.
‘Simon, believe it or not, managed to give such a selective interpretation of the Lytton Report that anyone who hadn’t read it might have wondered whether it wasn’t the Chinese who had invaded Japan instead of vice versa. Not surprisingly, the smaller nations were indignant. Before their very eyes all the fine words and noble undertakings were proving to be gross hypocrisy. “If the League does not succeed in securing peace and justice,” the Norwegian delegate declared angrily, “then the whole system by which right was meant to replace might will collapse.” And he knew what he was talking about, as it has turned out. One of the Finns then wanted to know if the League was merely a debating club. I don’t know if you can imagine, Monty, the shock and anger and disappointment we all felt at the way Simon and our Foreign Office destroyed, with the help of their cronies, what was without doubt the best chance the world had ever had to institute a system of international justice!’ Matthew, making a violent gesture with his beer bottle, had caused the liquid inside it to foam out of the neck and spill over his hand. He paused for a moment to brood and lick his knuckles.
In the meantime the door had opened and half a dozen women had been shown in; they went to sit in a glum row on a bench against the wall.
‘You picking please woman at your disposition,’ said the Indian politely.
Four of the newcomers were middle-aged Chinese women with scarlet cheekbones; two of them started a whispered conversation in Cantonese, a third puffed smoke-rings from green lips, a fourth took out her knitting. The other two women were much younger, mere girls; one was a flat-nosed, round-faced Malay, the other a plain, pallid Chinese with neat pigtails; this latter girl took out a school exercise book and a text book and began to do her Latin homework. Monty looked them over without excitement and belched: the beer seemed unusually gaseous this evening. He was uncomfortable and out of sorts, no doubt about it. He felt, in particular, that there was still another bubble of air lodged distressingly inside him. Would it soon rise to the surface? He waited, surveying himself internally and thinking what a wretched evening he was having.
Suddenly, from some other part of the building through the thin walls there came a drunken Scandinavian voice. ‘You say you are a wirgin. I say you are not a wirgin!’ This was followed by an alarming crash.
‘But,’ said Matthew, who had taken a gulp of beer and was striding up and down once more (he was sweating copiously and felt by no means sober though he had had little to drink all evening), ‘the Report was there and there was nothing they could do about it. That Report had stuck in the gullets of the Great Powers. They could neither swallow it nor spit it out. In fact, the only thing they could think of to do