Singapore Grip - J. G. Farrell [9]
He had lived alone all his life and did not mean to change his ways simply because he was getting on in years. Surprisingly, he was married. But his wife was in England and always had been. He had married her late in life and never encouraged her to come out to Malaya. Perhaps he had been afraid that people would laugh at him, for she was some thirty years younger than himself (she was dead now, though: he had outlasted her despite those thirty years). More likely, he had simply preferred living by himself and his wife had not seemed to mind, as far as anyone knew. Moreover, he had paid visits to her in England where he was sometimes obliged to go on business. On one of these visits he had even made her pregnant, which speaks for cordial relations. The result of their union had been a son called Matthew who, like his mother, had never appeared in Singapore.
At one time Mr Webb had had the notion that young Matthew should marry Joan. Yes, the old chap had taken a benevolent interest in her as a little girl, showering her with silver spoons, napkin rings and strings of pearls. No doubt Mr Webb, used to his own somewhat despotic family arrangements, had seen no reason why authority should not be exercised to merge families in the same way as businesses. Walter smiled. That might have saved all this bother with unsuitable young men! But by the mid-thirties this union was no longer mentioned, nor had been for some years.
Matthew and Joan … they might almost had been designed for each other. What a shame! As it happened, neither Walter nor the rest of his family, except for his younger daughter, Kate, had set eyes on Matthew although they, too, had made occasional visits to England. Matthew and Walter’s son, Monty, were roughly the same age, yet when Monty had been at school in England Matthew had not joined him … he had been sent to school in Switzerland, or in Sweden, or in some other country. For, Walter recalled, gazing sadly at the portrait of his former partner, in the smooth and otherwise flawless edifice which Mr Webb had constructed around himself in preparation for a dignified and comfortable old age, a single nasty crack had appeared.
Old Mr Webb, although his faculties had remained unimpaired in most respects, had been assailed by certain progressive ideas about diet and education and Matthew had been brought up in accordance with them. This was surely a tragedy worthy of that… what was his name? … that French blighter … yes, Balzac, that was it. The most progressive of all the schools Matthew had been sent to, so Walter had heard, had taken co-education to the limit of allowing no distinction whatsoever to be made between the sexes. Children were known simply by the title ‘Citizen’ and a surname. Boys and girls alike wore the same baggy, flowing pantaloons and bullfighter jackets. They swam naked together in the swimming pool, had their hair cropped to a similar length, played the same noncompetitive games, and were allowed to unroll their sleeping mats in whichever dormitory they pleased provided it was not in the same one two nights running.
This was undoubtedly the most extreme of several private schools which Matthew had attended. The others had probably specialized in nothing more extreme than vegetarianism and some form of non-coercive teaching. Yet the thought of these schools still haunted Walter to this day. He had done his best to remonstrate, mind you, but the old man was obstinate and had shown himself ready to take offence. The matter had had to be dropped. But what all these schools had done to young Matthew, Walter could only wonder. It seemed to him pathetic beyond