Singapore Grip - J. G. Farrell [195]
He walked on at random, now northwards, now westwards. He passed a sign which read Nanyang Dentist and the dentist himself, perhaps, sitting in his white coat on the pavement smoking a cigarette. A ginger cat with a docked tail crossed his path and slipped hopefully under the bead-hung entrance to the North Pole Creamery. A Chinese song blared tinnily from a wireless somewhere above his head in the forest of poles and washing; two voices gabbled in different languages riddled with atmospheric from two other wirelesses nearby. He passed on to the street corner where a Chinese funeral, which he at first took for a parade, was getting down to business outside a shop-house. A framed photograph of the dead man had been set up on a table on the pavement, a prosperous-looking fellow wearing the most formal of Western blue suits and white shirts; two tall lamps swathed in sackcloth for the occasion flanked the photograph: piles of oranges and apples and bundles of smoking joss-sticks stood in front of it. At the side of this table was another; Matthew found himself confronted with a great lobster-coloured pig’s mask complete with ears and flaring nostrils, crabs, whole naked chickens, some squashed as flat as plates, very greasy-looking, others with their yellow waxen heads horribly bent back over their bodies.
Matthew looked at his watch: he would soon have to be getting back to the Mayfair for something to eat before the night’s watch. He lingered for a moment, however, to inspect the paper models of a motor-car, a wireless, a refrigerator and other useful articles that the dead man would be taking on his journey, thinking: ‘After all, if these are the things people want and entrepreneurs like my father help them to get them …’ He wondered what the head man had thought of it all, whether he had been satisfied. Here he was, presumably, in this impressive coffin which might, to judge by its size, have been hollowed out of a substantial tree trunk, each end swept up like the prow of a ship and standing on trestles which advertised, in English and Chinese, the name and telephone number of the undertaker. A line of professional mourners dressed in crudely stitched sackcloth sat on the kerb, smoking cigarettes and looking disaffected. A small boy hammered on a tin drum and was now joined by a rather down-at-heel brass band of elderly men in white uniforms who struck up raggedly for a few moments. An aeroplane roared by very low overhead and the mourners looked up apprehensively … but it was British, a Catalina flying-boat. Matthew walked on thoughtfully. As he walked, hands in pockets, he felt someone take his arm. Looking round he saw Miss Chiang’s smiling face.
‘Vera! Where have you been? Why haven’t you been back to the Mayfair?’
Vera’s smile disappeared; she looked a trifle upset. She said with a shrug: ‘They told me not to come back.’
‘Who told you?’
‘A man from Mr Blackett’s office.’ She shrugged again. ‘It does not matter. It is not in the least “pressing”. Tell me about yourself … I’m so glad to see you are now well again. What a terrible fever! You gave me such a fright. I was afraid you might “kick the bucket”.’
‘But why did they tell you not to come back?’
‘They say my job has been finished. They bring me suitcase and money and a letter of thanks signed by Miss Blackett. I think it is because she is jealous of my beauty.’
‘D’you really think so? Lumme!’ Matthew mopped his perspiring face with a handkerchief.
‘Yes,’ went on Vera, looking pretty and malicious, yet at the same time more innocent than ever, ‘it is because also she does not have my command of foreign languages and because my breasts are bigger than hers. She does not have my poise, either, which I have probably inherited from my mother … I think I told you my mother was Russian princess, forced to show “clean heels” during Revolution. Well, there … it is not worth bothering about.’
Meanwhile, they had strolled on together and, after a moment