The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [422]
‘But no, wait, Abdul. On second thoughts we must let Monty make his own decision about the yogi. He’ll never learn if we always have to tell him what’s what. I shall let him take charge of the dinner-party this evening. There probably won’t be more than a dozen guests or so and they can be served in the breakfast-room. Tell him, will you, that I won’t appear until after they’ve eaten. I’ve work to do.’ And as the old servant was leaving Walter added: ‘The boy must learn by his own mistakes, Abdul. There’s no other way, I’m afraid, no other way.’
Alone in his study Walter was once more preoccupied with his family, this time with his son. Monty had energy and he worked hard. He had done a good job in reorganizing the administration of their estates when business was expanding again after the Depression. He was doing a good job now of pushing through the replanting, very often against opposition from estate managers who could not see the logic of it when rubber was booming. He even had some business sense which, with experience, might be developed. But the boy was erratic, there was no other word for it. Every now and then he would produce some wild idea that made you wonder whether he had understood anything at all. A yogi to entertain at supper on a day like this! True, he had not known that Mr Webb would collapse, but all the same! And they had barely recovered from the Chinese band he had insisted on having at the garden-party.
Moreover, Monty was no longer, strictly speaking, a boy. He was thirty. If he were ever going to learn by his mistakes it was high time that he started. Walter could not help comparing him, unfavourably, with a photograph he had once seen of the five young Firestones, each one as neatly brushed, as smartly turned out in his identical dark suit as his four brothers. And each one, no doubt, with a perfect command of that day’s Wall Street Journal. You would not catch the young Firestones inviting fakirs to dinner-parties.
Monty had certain good qualities but he was seriously lacking in judgement. Perhaps this would not have mattered if it had been merely a question of the occasional bizarre idea for amusing guests, but alas, it was not. In 1936 Monty had been sent to take charge of the London office for a few months to learn the European side of the business and, while he was there, he had got Blackett and Webb involved in something that anyone with common sense would have avoided. Towards the end of that year Monty had lent the authority of the firm to a great wave of speculation which was being generated by the rubber dealers and brokers in Mincing Lane. Mincing Lane’s market analysts, peering into the swirling mists of the future, had perceived not only an approaching shortage of rubber but, stretching beyond that shortage, higher prices as far as the eye could see (that is what they said they had perceived, anyway). The brokers’ market reports were in little doubt, they declared, but that the Restriction Committee had decided on maintaining higher prices indefinitely; after all, it could make little difference to the manufacturers who would simply pass the increases on to their customers. And even if the Committee had not decided on a higher price it was well known, in Mincing Lane if not in Malaya, that not enough rubber could be produced to meet higher percentage rates of release. Besides, there was a shortage of labour. Besides, it was well known that once the native smallholders, who produced almost half of Malaya’s rubber, made a little money, as they would with present high prices, they had the amiable habit of downing tools instead of pressing home their advantage, preferring to doze the day away in hammocks. So, one way or another, a shortage of rubber was inevitable. There was a quick fortune to be made.
Well, promotion of this sort, designed to make your mouth water, is what one must expect of a commodity broker. After all, such a fellow has to make a living somehow and Walter was the last person