The Empire Trilogy (119 page)

The result? Strikes had begun to break out in Malaya and the Straits Settlements with increasing frequency. The supply of cheap labour had become finite. Many of the estate workers and squatters on pineapple plantations, hitherto isolated from their fellow-workers, had managed to acquire cheap Japanese bicycles: now meetings of widely dispersed workers could be held and collective resistance to low wages had become possible.

‘And we didn't even have the wit to sell them the bloody bicycles!' reflected Walter with a wry smile at Mr Webb's effigy.

There had been another development, too. Chinese women, deprived of employment by the collapse of the silk industry in China and not subject to the limitation of the Aliens Ordinance, had begun to arrive by the shipload, whereas before the Depression, apart from women imported by brothel-keepers to stock their establishments, there had been few or none. The result was a sudden sinking of roots. Women had begun to take the cooking and buying of food out of the hands of the Chinese labour-contractors. The workers, who had once been easily abused nomads drifting from one estate or tin-mine to another, had started to settle down and demand the rights of citizens. Old Mr Webb's almond-paste lips might well curl in contempt at the way his younger partner had allowed the initiative to pass to his employees but could he himself have done anything to prevent it?

One of the first strikes, though isolated, had been the most serious of all. In the winter of 1935 Communist miners had taken possession of a coal mine at Batu Arang and set up a soviet to administer it. A soviet in the middle of British Malaya, if you please! Walter had been staggered to hear of it. Of course, it had not lasted long. Even if the Batu Arang mine had not been crucial for electricity and the railway it could not have been allowed to remain as an example to the rest of Malaya's labour force. The police had wasted no time in storming and recapturing it. But the miners' rash action (how naïve they must have been to think that they would get away with it!) had been like a sudden gust of wind which fills the air with thistledown and strips the dandelion of its whiskers. In due course, given time for germination, strikes had begun to spring up all around. Next year it had been the turn of the pineapple factories. The year after that they had spread for the first time to the rubber estates. And what could the old man have done to prevent it? Not a thing.

‘Times have changed. That's what the old chap never wanted to see. He thought everything should continue the way it always had. But times have changed, for all that.'

Again that shadow stirred in the depths of his mind: to whom would Mr Webb leave his holdings in the business? ‘A businessman must move with the times,' said Walter aloud. And breaking off Mr Webb's other ear, in the interests of symmetry as much as of appetite, Walter departed in search of Monty and his guests, crunching it between his strong yellow teeth as he went.

Walter could hear no sound as he made his way along the passage to the breakfast-room and his hopes began to rise. The room, indeed, proved to be deserted, although aromatic cigar smoke still hung in the air. Could it be that the guests had taken their leave already, as a mark of respect to old Mr Webb? If that was the case, then so much the better; Walter was weary after the day's difficulties. But one of the ‘boys' clearing the table undeceived him. The party had moved outside to watch the yogi demonstrate his talents. Walter followed them, cracking his knuckles. ‘Let the young fool learn by his mistakes then!'

Stepping grimly out of the luxuriously refrigerated air of the house into the sweltering night Walter found that a little herd of guests, men in white dinner-jackets, women in long evening dresses, had collected on that same portico from which, earlier in the day, he had surveyed the progress of the garden-party. On each side flights of stone steps, glimmering white in the darkness, dropped in zigzags to the lawn on which, directly beneath the balustrade, a platform on wooden trestles had been set up for the yogi's performance. Two powerful floodlights smoking with insects had been directed down on the yogi from above. From behind the lights the guests watched him uneasily. Walter passed among them, shaking hands and responding with a few grave words to their expressions of regret over the collapse of Mr Webb. It was true, of course, he muttered, that the old gentleman had had a good innings. Still, one could not help feeling that it was the end of an era. Walter's words, replete with the quiet dignity which the situation demanded, were unfortunately accompanied by a strange descant from below, some monotonous rigmarole in a language no one could understand, spattered from time to time with incomprehensible English. Really, it was perfectly unsuitable and ludicrous.

Monty suddenly came springing up the steps from the lawn where he had evidently been making some final arrangements. He was rubbing his hands together violently and chuckling in anticipation. Walter's heart sank at the sight of him: the boy had such a wild look.

‘There you are, Father. I was just going to get you. I was afraid you might miss this fellow. He's really a scream. He does the most amazing things.'

Walter drew his son to one side and said quietly: ‘I want you to get this over as quickly as possible. I very much doubt whether it was ever a good idea, but to carry on with it this evening in view of what has happened to Mr Webb, really, you must have lost your senses.'

‘Oh, look here, Father …' protested Monty.

But Walter went on, ignoring him: ‘I should have thought that the merest common sense would have told you … And what d'you think the Langfields will say when they hear about it? They'll waste no time in putting it around that the Blacketts have been dancing on Mr Webb's grave while the body is still warm!'

Walter, becoming excited, had spoken louder than he had intended and the bristles on his spine had puffed up beneath his shirt … One or two of the guests had begun to show signs of concern at this sudden whispered altercation between father and son. Walter realized that even Monty was looking at him oddly. ‘Anyway, get rid of the fellow as soon as you can,' he said sharply.

Monty stiffened. The chanting had stopped. ‘OK, Father. Yeah, OK!' he muttered and slid away swiftly towards the balustrade beneath which the yogi was now beginning to demonstrate his powers. Walter continued to pass among the guests, conversing gravely with them as if something unsuitable were not happening, or about to happen, just out of sight beneath the portico. And while he conversed he mused grimly again on the damage done to the firm by Monty's erratic hand in its affairs, for was it not fair to say that the labour trouble on the estates in 1937 had stemmed, indirectly at least, from that great speculative rubber boom which Monty and the London office, in concert with certain unscrupulous brokers of Mincing Lane, had whipped up in the autumn of 1936 with their predictions of a rubber scarcity lasting as far as the eye could see?

Well, the truth of the matter was simple: the swift rise in the price of rubber, and of the employers' profits, had not, unfortunately, gone unnoticed by the Chinese work-force. There had been complaints about low wages in Selangor and Negri Sembilan. On the Bangi estate in Ulu Langat the manager had tried to get rid of his Chinese workers and replace them with Javanese. In no time the workers on half a dozen estates had downed tools. Moreover, other districts soon began to join because the workers from the Connemara estate, who had drawn up a list of demands for the Protector of Chinese, were fanning out on bicycles, those same cheap Jap bicycles which Blackett and Webb had not, until too late, thought of importing instead of the more costly products of Birmingham and Coventry, spreading the news far and wide. Presently twenty thousand or more Chinese had stopped work.

And it had all been perfectly unnecessary. The peaceful atmosphere of Malaya had been riven for no purpose. Ugly scenes had developed. Chinese detectives sent to look for Communists among the strikers, that
idée fixe
of the Chinese Protectorate, had been roughed up. Heads had been broken. In due course over a hundred workers had found themselves behind bars and, to their original demand for a ten cents a day increase in wages, the strikers were now adding two more: the release of the arrested men and compensation for injuries, bound in the end to involve a loss of face for the Government.

And why had it been unneccessary? Beceause that ‘almost permanent' rubber boom which Monty and the market analysts had seen trembling in their telescopes at the end of 1936 had proved to be a mirage, as anyone in Malaya or the Netherlands East Indies could have told you it would. The price of rubber, ridiculously inflated by brokers' claims, had collapsed, aided by a recession in America. Sales of cars had declined and by the spring of 1938 the price of rubber had plummeted to about five pence a pound. Hardly had the strikers had their pay increased from sixty to seventy-five cents a day as a result of bitter struggles up and down the country, when workers were being laid off and wages reduced once more. But Monty, the young fool, impervious to the effects on Malaya's estate workers (on Malaya's social fabric even, for once this sort of thing started …!) of these wild fluctuations in price generated by the London market, had been unable to see further than the chance of a quick profit. Instead of squashing the brokers' claims he had egged them on. And that, thought Walter more grimly than ever, was another example of the changing times. ‘Young men these days have no sense of responsibility to the country!'

The yogi, Walter discovered, gazing down at him with distaste, was a tall, cadaverous individual, evidently a Punjabi. He was clad only in a white
dhoti
and gold turban. In the middle of the turban a large white gem, perhaps a diamond but more likely a piece of cut glass, flared in the floodlights. Thin as he was his naked chest was nevertheless disturbingly equipped with a pair of well-formed female breasts. Some distance to the right of the improvised stage the Blacketts'
kebun
could be seen tending a blazing bonfire.

Meanwhile, the yogi's assistant, a sallow, gold-toothed Eurasian in tattered black evening dress was following in Walter's wake among the guests, proffering for their inspection a box of tin-tacks and a cheap china tea-cup. The guests fingered them uncertainly. When they had satisfied themselves that no deception was being practised on them the Eurasian threw the box of tacks down to the yogi who caught it, opened it and began, rather gloomily, popping them into his mouth one by one and swallowing them. The guests continued to watch him uneasily. The only sound was the impatient cracking of Walter's knuckles.

The box of tacks was a large one and the yogi seemed to be in no hurry, as if anxious to savour each one. Presently the guests began to exchange glances, as if to say that it was dreadfully hot out here and would this go on much longer? Certain of the men, particularly those who considered their time valuable, glanced at their watches with a preoccupied air; one of them, whom Walter recognized as an influential executive of one of the big tyre companies in Singapore, even turned away from the balustrade altogether.

‘Yes,' agreed Walter, swiftly taking him by the arm and compelling him to saunter up and down along the same path which he himself had been pacing earlier in the day, ‘it's bound to come as a shock to those who, like you and I, knew him as a younger man. But then, at his time of life …' Walter shrugged sadly.

‘Some time may elapse, I'm afraid, before we see his like again,' declared the man from the tyre company with an air of rather sepulchral piety, but again sneaking a look at his watch.

They began to discuss, in a desultory fashion while the yogi went on stolidly swallowing tacks, the mysterious latex-drinking snails which were said to have appeared on certain isolated estates. Neither of them was inclined to take these snails very seriously. ‘Still,' said Walter, ‘we'd better not let Mincing Lane get to hear of them or they'll be using the wretched creatures to fuel another round of speculation.' He paused sombrely, having reminded himself of the results of the last speculative boom. These speculators were playing the game of those who, like the Communists, wanted to foment trouble in the Colony. What a lot of strikes Singapore had seen this year already! The Harbour Board dockers had been on strike for three months … at a time when shipment of rubber and tin was vital, not only for profits but for the War Effort as well. Hardly had that collapsed when, amid violent riots, another one had started at the Firestone factory and then trouble had spread all over the place with rubber immobilized everywhere, a disastrous pile-up of fruit at the height of the season caused by a go-slow of pineapple cutters at the canning factories, and to cap it all, pitched battles between police trying to arrest trouble-makers at the Tai Thong factory and the labour force armed with staves, stones and soda-water bottles.

Walter, despite those heads of cake, began to suffer misgivings about the loyalty of his workers. What if the Blackett and Webb jubilee should be chosen for propaganda purposes not only by the Government to demonstrate ‘Continuity in Prosperity' under British rule, but also
by the Communists
to demonstrate the exploitation and disaffection of the workers! The thought of a jubilee procession up the hill to Government House in the teeth of a howling mob was alarming. How the Langfields would laugh!

‘Where are they taking Margaret?' demanded Walter's companion suddenly, for the yogi's Eurasian assistant, gold teeth gleaming, had selected his wife from the little herd of guests and with much polishing of hands was leading her down the steps to where the yogi, his meal of tin-tacks finished, was waiting glumly on the platform. Half-way down the steps she baulked and would have returned had not Monty come hurrying down to reassure her. The bristles on Walter's spine began to stir beneath his dress shirt.

All the lady was required for, explained the Eurasian in an ingratiating tone, was to inspect the mouth of the yogi. The yogi, recognizing the signal, opened his mouth wide. The Eurasian promptly grasped the lady's shrinking fingers and stuffed them into the yogi's open mouth. She snatched them out again quickly. No tin-tacks had been discovered. Monty, beside himself with delight, beamed up at the balustrade. In the strong lights he looked wilder than ever.