The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [687]
A telephone had been ringing for some time in the storekeeper’s office. A whispered conversation took place between Mohammed and the store-keeper who had been eyeing Walter uncertainly. Mohammed finally approached Walter to tell him that his office had rung, afraid that Walter might forget that he had an appointment with the directors of Langfield and Bowser. Mohammed would have liked to ask Walter if he was feeling all right, but did not quite dare. He stared blankly at Mohammed for a few moments. Then he said: ‘Oh yes, so I have. What time is it?’
When he had washed his face under a tap, and bound a handkerchief round his cut hand, he picked up his jacket and went outside to the car where Mohammed was waiting, holding the door open. As he made to get in he caught sight of his own reflection in the window. His shirt and trousers were black with smuts from the burning oil on the other side of the Island. He hesitated a moment, wondering whether he should first have driven himself to the Club to shower and change. But he was already late. Besides, there was a war on.
Langfield and Bowser’s headquarters were in the Bowser Building on the corner of Cecil and Cross Streets. Had Solomon Langfield’s house in Nassim Road not been devastated in the January air-raids they would most likely have moved their offices there, away from the centre of town, as Walter had done with his offices. As it was, on account of the sudden flowing back to Singapore of so many troops who had to be found billets, they had been unable to find convenient premises out of the danger zone. ‘All the safe places appear to have been hogged by the bloody Army,’ the Secretary had explained to those anxious members of the board who had remained on the Island. They might have managed to find somewhere even so, thanks to old Solomon’s cunning and contacts, had the Chairman not been abruptly called to his reward. That had thrown everything into confusion. The result was that here they still were, holding uneasy board meetings in the Bowser Building ‘in the thick of the action’ as the Secretary put it. He belched dejectedly; for some reason everything he ate these days seemed to cause flatulence.
Meetings were now held as infrequently as possible, but unfortunately they could not be discontinued altogether: there was so much of importance that had to be discussed. They had been astonished and dismayed to hear of Nigel Langfield’s proposed marriage to Joan Blackett and had spent many perilous hours attempting to predict its implications for themselves and their firm. If Walter Blackett got his hands on Nigel’s stock or, what amounted to the same thing, got his hands on Nigel, then the future looked black indeed for Langfield and Bowser Limited. Walter would surely waste no time in diverting Langfield’s most profitable business into Blackett and Webb’s coffers, no doubt doing so with a wealth of plausible-sounding arguments about ‘rationalization’. But Langfield’s worried directors, sitting around their board-room table in steel helmets and quivering with alarm at the menacing sounds that filtered in from outside, had no appetite for a dose of rationalism administered by Walter … at least, not if it meant what they thought it would mean.
They racked their brains, wondering what Solomon would have done in such a situation, though really they knew the answer all too well. Soloman would not have got himself into it in the first place. But one thing, above all, puzzled them. Why had Solomon given his blessing to the marriage? He must have known of the danger of Nigel’s being annexed, shares and all, by the Blackett family. Yet he had given his consent. This was altogether baffling. For they had known Solomon well enough to realize that he would not have done so without having some clever plan worked out in advance in the manner of a chess master who sacrifices a piece willingly in the knowledge that, in the long run, it will be to his advantage. Again and again this had happened in the past,