The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [443]
‘Sylvia and I used to motor thirty or forty miles sometimes in our pyjamas to have supper with friends in Johore. That’s what I call a comfortable way to live!’
And the Major, though he would have preferred to discuss Japan’s increasingly threatening attitude in the sphere of international politics, was obliged to confess that going to a dinnerparty in pyjamas did sound to him the very model of a life of contentment: obviously in those days there was no risk of meeting maddened hordes of strikers waving parangs.
The Singapore Club in the old days was not, declared Walter on another visit a few weeks later (forestalling the Major’s attempt to ask him what he thought of Roosevelt’s proposal, just announced, that French Indo-China should be considered a neutral country from which Japan could get food and raw materials; the Major had got on well with old Mr Webb and sorely missed his chairman’s forceful views on perplexing world topics), no, it was not the mixing pot of all ages and conditions it had since become, no sir! Nowadays you might find yourself rubbing shoulders with any young twerp just out from England or some other fellow whose too careful public school accent might slip from time to time exposing heaven knew what dubious origins. But then it had been truly exclusive, the sort of place frequented by the older and more influential men in the Colony, reserved exclusively for males, of course, except for New Year’s Day when ladies were invited for lunch to eat the traditional dish: Pheasant Lucullus! Yes, the Singapore Club used to be the lair of the Tuan Besar, like this poor old chap here, and it was quite a daunting prospect for a young man to go and visit him in it.
A mere two days later, as the Major, perfectly disconsolate at being deprived of his chairman and unable to settle down to the paper work awaiting him in a very empty-seeming office, was roaming the bungalow like a dog without its master, he once more came upon Walter who had somehow stolen into the building without being seen and was lurking at the old man’s bedside.
‘Singapore had a pride in herself in those days,’ declared Walter, spotting the Major in the doorway, but then he hesitated, perhaps realizing that as an opening remark this might be considered odd. After a moment he cleared his throat and added: ‘Everything is all right here, is it, Major? If you need any help let me know and I’ll send someone down from the office.’
The Major agreed that everything was in order. Indeed, since Blackett and Webb managed the day-to-day running of the Mayfair there was little for him to do except play cards with Dupigny (for the Frenchman, now penniless and a refugee in overcrowded Singapore, had been given shelter in one of the Mayfair’s many rooms) and at fixed hours to open up the recreation hut which old Mr Webb had patriotically built in the grounds for the troops flooding into the Colony (fortunately, no troops ever put in an appearance to make use of it). But though life had pursued its usual uneventful course at the headquarters of the Mayfair Rubber Company, there had been some alarming developments on the international scene: in response to the reported occupation by Japanese troops of the whole of Indo-China, America, Britain and Holland had frozen Japanese assets. One did not have to be an economist to see that this put Japan in a serious plight. Would this action make the Japanese see reason or would it light the blue-paper to a Far Eastern war? The Major was anxious to have Walter’s opinion about this (he had already had Dupigny’s which was deeply pessimistic, but then so were all Dupigny