Singapore Grip - J. G. Farrell [60]
‘Oh, you’re interested in the “colonial experience”, are you?’ he mumbled indifferently. ‘Well, you’ve come to the right place. You’ll get a basinful of it here, all right.’
Ehrendorf glanced round quickly but without catching Matthew’s eye. His glance, indeed, got no further than Joan’s tennis racket still tightly gripped between her knees as she lolled back against the leather seat: he stared at the racket with great intensity, but only for a moment. Then his moustache was dividing the breeze again.
For some time the spinning back and forth of the Pontiac’s steering-wheel as they swerved to avoid other vehicles had caused the three young people on the back seat to sway from side to side. Joan, because she was in the middle and had less to hold on to, tended to slide more than the others and already once or twice Matthew had found himself pressed against her soft body while she struggled to recover. Now, however, as the Pontiac negotiated a wide curve with muttering tyres and Joan was once more thrown up against him, she appeared to abandon the unequal struggle: she simply lay against him with her head on his shoulder. Matthew wondered whether to push her off but decided it might not seem polite: better to wait for a curve in the opposite direction to do the job for him. In a few moments the car straightened its course again, which should have allowed her to slide back towards her brother, but to his surprise she remained where she was, sprawled against him. And even when, presently, off-side tyres howling like souls in torment, they entered a curve in the opposite direction, she still remained firmly glued to his side, as if all the laws of physics had been suspended in her favour. Then he really did begin to wonder, because that surely could not be right.
Matthew licked his lips, perplexed. He was not quite sure what to make of it all. The truth was that he felt too hot already without having someone pressed against him. He was very much tempted to shove her away to allow the air to circulate. Not that he found the sensation of her body against him altogether disagreeable, he had to admit. But still, it was a bit awkward. Ah, now he caught a tantalizing breath of French perfume on the rushing tropical evening.
‘Watch out for that tennis racket, Sis,’ said Monty with a leer.
Matthew glanced at the turbaned head beside him but Joan showed no sign of having heard her brother’s remark. Nor had Ehrendorf apparently. At any rate, only the neatly barbered back of his head continued to be visible.
Thinking that perhaps some conversation might revive Joan sufficiently to unglue her from his side Matthew asked: ‘Does anyone happen to know what the Singapore Grip is? The RAF blokes in the plane kept telling me to watch out for it but they wouldn’t tell me what it actually was!’ But as a conversational opening this proved a failure. Nobody replied or showed any sign of having heard. ‘How deuced odd they all are!’ thought Matthew crossly. ‘And what’s the matter with Jim Ehrendorf?’ He was tired from his journey, too tired to make an effort with people who were not prepared to make an effort back.
Monty, meanwhile, had pulled the brim of his sun-helmet over his eyes, turned up his collar, stuck his cigarette in the corner of his mouth and was saying in a hoarse, gangster voice: ‘Keep your heads down, you guys. The men from the Ministry of Supply are after us!’ Again the Pontiac shed a great bark of laughter as it raced on into the city, leaving it to float behind among the padding rickshaw coolies who formed a slow stream on either side of the road.
14
Weariness caused Matthew to give up the struggle for a while; he