Singapore Grip - J. G. Farrell [239]
‘You think Miss Blackett is better cook than I,’ Vera said accusingly. ‘I don’t know how you can touch a European woman like Miss Blackett, they sweat so much. It is something horrible!’
‘But…’
‘Yes, you prefer making love-making to Miss Blackett even though she sweats something horrible.’
‘Don’t be silly. You say that just because I’m not hungry when you cook me a meal! You know I only like to be with you. Come and sit beside me.’ Putting the plate down, he murmured : ‘I’ll finish the rest later.’
‘I know you think I am not a good cook but my mother could not teach me. Always she was used to servants here, servants there, because she was a princess. It is because my family has blue blood that I do not know how to cook.’
‘But Vera, I think …’
She had come to sit beside him and now put her hand over his mouth and said: ‘If we stay together I’ll learn to be a good cook so that you can invite your friends and we will have a nice time.’
‘I don’t have any friends, except Major Archer and Dupigny … and, of course, Jim Ehrendorf, but I don’t know where he is.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Soon I shall have to be going, Vera. I’m expected on duty tonight.’
‘Not just yet. Lie here with me a little while. “With so much quarrelling and so few kisses, how long do you think our love can last?” That is what it says in the Chinese song translated into English by Mr Waley. Shall I read you another verse? But first take off your clothes and lie down beside me.’
‘Mrs Blackett and Kate are leaving for Australia tomorrow … and I hear that lots of other women are leaving, too. Tomorrow we must try to arrange for you to leave, too. It isn’t safe for you to stay in Singapore with the Japanese so close.’
All night I could not sleep
Because of the moonlight on my bed.
I kept hearing a voice calling;
Out of nowhere, Nothing answered ‘yes’.
Matthew lay there inert, listening to the faint sounds which came from the other cubicles in the tenement and from outside in the street, above all, like the very rhythm of poverty and despair, that weary, tubercular coughing which never ceased. ‘Tomorrow, d’you hear me?’
I will carry my coat and not put on my belt;
With unpainted eyebrows I will stand at the front window.
My tiresome petticoat keeps on flapping about;
If it opens a little, I shall blame the spring wind.
‘What will become of us?’ Matthew wondered, thinking how vulnerable they both were, lying there in the stifling cubicle and breathing that strange smell that hung everywhere in Chinatown, that odour of drains and burnings rags. And how strange it was that someone should have made up these verses, which he found extraordinarily moving, hundreds of years ago and yet they sounded as new and fresh as if they had been composed by someone who had been here in this cubicle only a moment earlier. And that this person should have belonged to a quite different culture from his own made it seem even more moving. And slowly a peculiar feeling stole over Matthew, almost like a premonition of disaster. All the different matters, both in his own personal life and outside it, which had preoccupied him in the past few weeks and even years, his relationship with his father and the history of Blackett and Webb, the time he had spent in Oxford and in Geneva, his friendship with Ehrendorf and with Vera and with the Major, his arguments about the League and even the one about colonial policy which he had had earlier in the evening with Nigel, and yes even his saying goodbye to dear little Kate … all these things now seemed to cling together, to belong to each other and to have a direction and an impetus towards destruction which it was impossible to resist.
I heard my love was going to Yang-chou
And went with him as far as Ch’u-shan.
For a moment when you held me fast in your outstretched arms
I thought the river stood still and did not flow.
‘Vera, listen to me. We must make arrangements for you to leave, and no later than tomorrow.’
Part Five
53
AIR-RAIDS: TWO POINTS FOR THE PUBLIC
1 You must