The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [444]
Taking the Major’s arm he explained with a chuckle how the great Russian dancer, Pavlova, had come to Singapore expecting to find herself dancing at the Town Hall theatre, only to find that it had already been booked by the Amateur Dramatic Society. Her manager had suggested that the Amateur Dramatic Society would not mind postponing its performance of Gilbert and Sullivan so that the great ballerina, before whom grovelled the most refined, most perfumed, most diamond-glittering, evening-dressed audiences in the world, might dance on the best stage available in the Straits. Ah, but as it turned out the Amateur Dramatic Society did mind! They had their pride. They had been founded over a hundred years ago. They saw no reason why they should surrender the Victoria Hall to a foreign artiste … and so she had to go off and make the best of a cramped little stage at the old German Club. And Walter laughed so long and loud that the ceiling rang with his laughter and even the melancholy Major looked amused … but had Walter’s laughter concealed a muffled cry from the direction of the mosquito net? The Major cast an uneasy glance in that direction. A strange rictus was twisting the old man’s lips. A mumbled cry broke from them which might have been: ‘Sun Yatsen!’ (or might not, it was hard to tell).
The Major freed himself from Walter’s grasp. It surely could not be … or could it? With an exclamation the Major sprang to his chairman’s side, whipping aside the film of mosquito netting. But too late! That smile or grimace, whichever it had been, that strangled cry, whatever it had meant, had been his last.
‘Young Matthew will be too late after all,’ observed Walter sadly. ‘And he’s due to arrive any day now.’
>‘If you have an hour to spare,’ Walter said to Joan on the following day, ‘I should like to show you something.’
Together father and daughter installed themselves in the back of the Bentley. Walter had evidently already given instructions to the syce for they set off without more ado in the direction of the river. Walter was more silent and subdued than usual and Joan found this whole expedition somewhat mysterious. ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
‘To look at a warehouse,’ he replied briefly but said no more. Only when the motor-car was nudging its way along the crowded streets beside the river did Walter again break his silence, to ask Joan if she had seen Ehrendorf.
‘No. I’ve finished with him,’ said Joan with a smile.
‘Ah,’ said Walter. ‘Good enough.’ He leaned forward to tap the syce on the shoulder. With considerable difficulty on account of the lorries being loaded and unloaded at the wharves where lighters and tong-kangs clustered several deep they had reached a tall brick godown at a bend in the river. Apart from the fact that it was built of brick in a conservative style and bore an inscription in white letters: Blackett and Webb Limited, recently repainted for the jubilee celebrations, there was nothing very remarkable about it.
‘You may wonder why I brought you here,’ said Walter, smiling now. ‘As you see, it’s just a godown, nothing very special. But to me this building is rather important because it’s the first we put up here in Singapore and, incidentally, an exact replica of Webb’s first building in Rangoon. I used to come here a lot and day-dream as a young man. Not that old Webb used to give me much time for day-dreaming. There’s a little office up above … Let’s go up if you don’t mind getting your frock dusty.’
They stepped through a small door cut in the massive wooden gates facing the road. After the heat and sunshine of the road it seemed dark and cool inside. Dust sparkled in a shaft of sunlight which blazed at their feet and cast a dim light