The Empire Trilogy (122 page)

Walter had wasted no time in cabling his London office, instructing them to telephone every hotel in London until they found a Matthew Webb. In the meantime poor Kate, who had not been consulted and who naturally dreaded the meeting in prospect, had waited praying that he would not be found. The principal cause of her despair was the thought of being seen ‘by a man' in her school uniform, a fate which she and her school-friends agreed was the ultimate humiliation. But in due course, after on or two false alarms, Matthew had been unearthed in a shabby boarding-house in Bloomsbury. The London manager of Blackett and Webb had packed Kate into a taxi and rushed her across London.

The meeting had not been a great success at first. Matthew had been lying on his bed in his underwear reading a book while his trousers, which had just been soaked in a cloudburst, were drying over a chair in the window. Without his trousers he was reluctant to let a young girl into his room although, as Walter later observed, one might have thought that this was one of the few contingencies in life that his progressive education had prepared him for. Moreover, at first he appeared never to have heard of any Kate Blackett and could not think what she wanted of him. Kate had had to shout explanations through the door, arousing the interest of the other lodgers. Meanwhile, the landlady's suspicions had been awakened by the telephone drag-net which had caught Matthew in her establishment and she had become convinced that he was a malefactor or prevert of some kind. So Kate's mortified explanations through the door had been punctuated by instructions from the landlady for him to leave her premises immediately. Finally, however, Matthew had dragged on his sodden trousers and opened the door.

Kate was later asked to describe the person who had confronted her as the door opened. Well, he was quite nice, she thought. She could not think of anything else to say. Oh yes she could, he wore spectacles. Chiefly what she remembered was that his shoes squelched when he walked: they had evidently been soaked, too. He had walked straight out of the boarding-house, ignoring the landlady and the London manager, who was rubbing his hands in consternation at the way things had turned out. Kate, dreadfully embarrassed by the furore she had caused, had followed Matthew to a tea-shop round the corner. She had felt so self-conscious that almost the only thing she remembered about their conversation was that when, at the end of it, Matthew had risen from his seat there had been a wet patch where he had been sitting. And yet they had got on very well really, she assured her father. He was quite nice, she thought.

Why stay at such a wretched place? Why travel with only one pair of trousers and shoes? It could hardly be that he was short of money. He presumably had a salary of some kind and Walter was certain that despite their estrangement old Mr Webb had not ceased to provide a generous allowance for his son. ‘I'm afraid,' Walter had said when discussing Kate's revelations with his wife, ‘that all those half-baked schools have had their effect on the lad, whatever Jim Ehrendorf may say to the contrary.'

As it happened, the Blacketts had been unable to learn much more from Ehrendorf than they had from Kate. Ehrendorf was perfectly well able to tell them what Matthew
thought
about a number of matters, many of them abstract. He could tell them where Matthew stood on ‘socialism in a single country', on J. W. Dunne's ‘serial time' and suchlike. What he could not do was to give the Blacketts any real idea of what he was
like
. Was he married? How did he dress? Well, if he wasn't married where did he eat his meals? Smiling, Ehrendorf had to admit that they had been so busy talking that many of these questions had not crossed his mind. Now that he thought about it he had come across Matthew once or twice in restaurants in Geneva, eating by himself with a book propped against a jug of wine or beer. But there was not much else he could remember. He agreed with Kate that Matthew wore glasses, however. He was sure of this because once, while they were strolling under the plane trees on the Quai Wilson, he had broken them.

‘How?'

‘Sir?'

‘How did he break them?'

But Ehrendorf could not remember. Perhaps he had dropped them. They had been discussing Locarno at the time. Matthew had strong feelings about such treaties and soon Ehrendorf was sharing them with the Blacketts: it seemed that as a good League man Matthew did not believe in the Big Powers settling things behind closed doors.

‘And so,' smiled Walter, ‘all you can tell us is that he wears glasses, which we knew already.'

‘And that he's a wonderful human being,' added Ehrendorf with warmth.

Kate had taken to giggling whenever Ehrendorf spoke warmly of Matthew. This time, when she giggled, Ehrendorf suddenly sprang across the room and seized her before she could escape. He picked her up bodily, although she was getting to be quite a lump, and brought her back under one arm. This time he was going to find out why she was laughing. In the end Kate had to confess: it was because he was always calling Matthew a ‘wonderful human being' and she kept thinking he was calling him a ‘wonderful Human Bean'! Her parents exchanged exasperated glances at this: Kate had recently discovered that she had a sense of humour and they had suffered greatly in consequence. But Ehrendorf seemed to find it amusing. Thereafter Matthew became known to the younger Blacketts as ‘the Human Bean'.

Well, since old Mr Webb continued to cling on stubbornly Matthew had to be sent for, whatever he was like, and influence used on his behalf to overcome the difficulties of war-time travel. Fortunately, rubber was a priority cargo these days and the Ministry of Supply listened sympathetically to Walter's request that Matthew should be sent out to take his father's place in the Mayfair Rubber Company. It took time before Matthew could be located through his solicitors (it turned out that he had not made a prudent bolt for it with the stampeding herd of well-to-do), and more time before the details could be arranged. The result was that not just weeks but months had passed since the unlucky day the old gentleman had fallen out of his chair at the garden-party before word eventually reached Walter that Matthew had started out on his journey. But these days unless you were a brass hat or a Minister nobody knew when you would arrive, or even if you would arrive at all.

Mr Webb, though severely paralysed and still unable to communicate, had in due course been moved back to the Mayfair with a nurse in constant attendance. Walter, who himself had a secret dread of dying in hospital, had overborne medical advice to the contrary and had the old gentleman returned to his home. There he could more easily take a few minutes away from his business affairs to lift a corner of the mosquito net and give a comforting squeeze to the cold knuckles which lay on the sheet.

Once or twice Mr Webb had tried to say something. Something to do with the sun, apparently. It could hardly be that the light was bothering him because the blinds of split bamboo chicks had been unrolled and allowed only a muted glow to enter the room. Perhaps the old man had been thinking of agreeable evenings spent prowling with his secateurs and watching the sunlight gleam on the skins of his naked gymnasts as they swooped and swung and balanced, growing stronger every day. Walter found it disturbing, nevertheless, to see his friend lying there, breathing noisily in his tent of white muslin. Mr Webb's eyelids were half open but his expression was vacant for the most part and he showed little sign of being aware of his surroundings. ‘This is how we all finish,' mused Walter grimly.

‘It's the end of an era,' he said aloud to Major Archer who stood beside him in a respectful pose at his dying chairman's bedside.

Because presently Mr Webb again tried to say something about the sun Walter decided that Miss Chiang should be recalled.

Perhaps he would find her presence soothing. After Mr Webb's collapse the gymnasts and body-builders had been dispersed with a bonus added to their emoluments. Miss Chiang had declined indignantly when offered an additional reward for staying away from her former employer while he was in hospital. Now the Major was given the delicate task of running her to earth in some tenement in Chinatown and persuading her to return to visit the patient. She agreed without fuss and her presence did indeed seem to exert a soothing influence on the old man. She was still wearing one of Joan's cast-off dresses and Walter, glimpsing her one day as she was leaving the Mayfair was taken aback, as much by her good looks as by the thought of her dubious relationship with old Mr Webb. ‘Who would have thought that Webb would end up like this with a half-caste holding his hand!'

Walter, these days, had little time to spare for visiting the sick. Business had never been more hectic and besides he was becoming increasingly preoccupied with the problem of finding a husband for Joan. Now that it had become clear that he was unlikely to inherit Mr Webb's share of the business it had become more important than ever that she should make a sensible match.

‘What are your feelings for Jim Ehrendorf, if you don't mind me asking?' he enquired mildly one day, finding her alone.

‘Oh, he'd put his hand in the fire for me,' she replied with a laugh.

Walter was silent for a moment, contemplating this reply which, though interesting, did not answer his question.

‘Don't you believe me?'

‘Of course I believe you,' said Walter, laughing in turn. ‘What I wanted to know was what you feel for
him?
'

Joan shrugged, gazing out of the window, her eyes like green pebbles. ‘He's all right. He gets on my nerves though, I'm thinking of chucking him one of these days … in fact, the sooner the better.' Walter was satisfied with this reply.

Some days later, however, he thought of it again in a rather different light. For it happened that one day, in the course of a casual conversation while waiting for Joan to come downstairs, Ehrendorf said something which Walter, as a rubber producer, found unusually interesting, and which placed him in something of a predicament if he were to pursue his policy of replacing Ehrendorf in Joan's affections with someone who would make a more suitable husband.

Walter's predicament stemmed indirectly from the successful operation of the Restriction scheme's tap for controlling the flow of rubber on to the market, of which he had originally been one of the chief plumbers. As a result of the recession of 1938 and the fall in price to five pence a pound the Committee had given the tap a savage twist, shutting down the flow to forty-five per cent of capacity. Thereafter in the reservoir of rubber stocks the level began to sink and the price to creep up again. By the beginning of 1939 the level had fallen once more below the danger mark which had released the previous boom, but the Committee still showed no sign of opening the tap.

As it had turned out, it was neither the idleness of the native smallholders nor the lack of capacity of the producing countries which had now set the price of rubber on its long, steady climb, but the declaration of war in Europe. At the end of 1939 with the level in the reservoir very low (a mere two months' absorption) the price had been standing at a gratifying shilling a pound. This, patriotism apart, had been a tense period for Walter and his colleagues. What effect would war have on the use of rubber? Their experience during the Great War had been of little help: in those days the industry had hardly got under way. But they had not had long to wait. Despite a grudging increase in the amount released to the market the level continued to sink. Rubber was being used more than ever.

At this point the Committee began to come under heavy pressure, not just from the manufacturers but from the United States Government and the British Ministry of Supply. More rubber must be released! And it was, but still not enough. The German attack on France and the Low Countries the preceding spring (May 1940) had alarmed the Americans about their future supplies: they wanted to build up a reserve in case it should be needed for their defence programme. And so they had established the Rubber Reserve Company to buy the 150,000 tons they thought they would need at a decent price of up to twenty US cents a pound; the Committee had agreed to increase the flow so that there would be enough rubber on the market for them to buy. Presently the Americans had decided to make it 330,000 tons.

Alas, against all expectations the amount of rubber used by private manufacturers continued to rise and, despite the increased rate of release, there was still not enough to go round. The United States Government's twenty cents, which at one time would have been considered bountiful, was being resolutely outbid by private manufacturers who, often as not (Walter had to smile at the thought of it) were themselves the chaps who had been appointed as buying agents for the Government and who were now in the satisfactory position of bidding against (and naturally outbidding) their official selves! How poignant it was when the Reserve Company found that after six months of effort its cupboard was still almost as bare as it had been at the beginning! Even when the Committee had at last reluctantly agreed to raise the rate of release to one hundred per cent for the first quarter of 1941 there was still no sign of the market reaching saturation point. The spreading Japanese influence, moreover, was diverting rubber from Indo-China and Siam away from Britain and the United States. There could no longer be any serious doubt about it, in Walter's view: the producers' wildest dreams were being realized. This time they had a
genuine
shortage of rubber, not just the wishful thinking of a fast-talking London broker.

Now in February 1941 while he was chatting idly with Ehrendorf about Japan's need for raw materials and the powerful grip that this gave the Western nations on her wind-pipe (where on earth had Joan got to, by the way, she surely hadn't stood him up
again
!) the young man happened to remark that his countrymen were planning to acquire a further 100,000 tons of rubber for the Reserve Company.