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26

The taxi-driver (it was still the grandfatherly Malay with white hair who had been driving them earlier in the evening), seeing Matthew stagger as he got out of the cab at the gate of the Mayfair, assumed him to be drunk and asked him if he would like a massage because he knew of a certain place … But Matthew shook his head. He felt weak and dizzy: all he wanted to do was to plunge into bed. He said good night to Monty and set off up the short drive towards the Mayfair Building; with a growl of its engine the taxi was gone, leaving only a deep sigh of relief floating in the empty air where it had been standing. Monty, bound on pleasure, this time did not intend to be thwarted.

‘I must have caught some fever,’ Matthew thought as he climbed the steps and dragged open the protesting outer door to the verandah. This thought was followed by another, still more distressing: perhaps he had caught the Singapore Grip! Certainly an illness of some kind had taken hold of him. He had half expected to find the Major smoking a cigar on the verandah, but though an electric light was burning, there was no sign of him. Nor was Dupigny anywhere to be seen. So tempting, however, was the prospect of resting his weary body without delay that Matthew allowed himself to be diverted into the nearest rattan armchair, where he lay panting and perspiring while he recovered a little of his strength. Almost immediately his eyelids dropped and he fell into a doze.

But in only a matter of moments he was woken again by the screeching hinges of the outer door. Someone was coming in. He struggled to sit up and look alert but his eyes seemed to have slipped out of focus and for some moments only presented him with a grey blur. Then he found himself face to face with Joan who was saying: ‘We saw the light from the road as Jim was on his way home and we thought we’d just call in to say good night.’

‘That was nice of you,’ said Matthew warmly. Ehrendorf had come in with Joan but was sitting on the arm of a bamboo chair half in the shadows of the door.

‘And Jim wanted to have a word with you,’ Joan went on.

‘If it’s about what we were discussing earlier,’ said Matthew, aware that his eyes were trying to slip out of focus again, ‘about, you know, the colonial question and so forth, well, the point I was trying to make is that we must allow the whole country to develop. At the moment what it amounts to is that we only allow the native people to work in agriculture because we insist on selling them our own manufactures. Let me give you an example…’

‘No, no, it wasn’t about that,’ cried Joan hastily. ‘Jim will tell you. Go on, you said you would,’ she added accusingly while Ehrendorf stirred uneasily on the edge of the circle of light and perhaps contemplated whatever it was that he had had in mind to say to Matthew.

In the meantime another layer of gauze had been removed from Matthew’s memory of what had gone on earlier in the evening, so that now at last he began to think: ‘What a miracle that they should have made it up after the row they were having an hour or two ago!’

‘Go on, you did say you would.’

Ehrendorf’s pale, handsome face continued to stare mutely at Matthew from out of the semi-darkness and he sighed. A motorcar passed up the road with a deep, chugging sound; the reflected light from its headlights glowed in thin slices through the unrolled blinds of split bamboo. Finally Ehrendorf said: ‘I just wanted to say, Matthew, that I expect I shall be leaving Singapore in a day or two … Another posting, I guess you’d call it. Not yet sure where to. I realized this evening that Joan and I … Ah, no future in our relationship … Best of friends … Hm, wish each other well, naturally …’ He fell silent.

‘There,’ said Joan.

‘What? You’re leaving? And I’ve only just arrived! That really is a shame!’ exclaimed Matthew, distressed. Ehrendorf had sunk his head briefly in his hands to give his face a weary polish. ‘It’s time I was getting home,’ he said. But whether he meant to America or to his flat