Part 45 (1/2)

Over the years Dupigny had noticed the Major becoming more private in his habits and, in some ways, undoubtedly a bit eccentric. If you had gone to take coffee with the Major in, let us say, 1930, you would have witnessed a strange ritual. The housekeeper would first appear with a silver jug containing just-boiled water. The Major, still chatting to you politely, would whip a thermometer from his breast pocket, plunge it into the water, remove it, read it, dry it on a napkin and, with a nod to the housekeeper, replace it in his pocket. The coffee could now be made! Ah, that was the bachelor life for you! And there were other things, too. He had taken to grumbling if his wine gla.s.ses did not sparkle as clear as rain-water ... yet at the same time thought nothing of piling his cigar ash on the polished surface of his mahogany dining-table, or of dropping it, without ceremony, on the carpet.

You might also, if the Major had ushered you into his drawing-room in Bayswater about the year 1930, have found it hard to discover a satisfactory seat, since all the more comfortable chairs and the sofa were occupied by slumbering dogs, refugees for the most part from Ireland's fight for independence and by now growing old. If you did find a seat it would be covered in fine dog hairs: these animals were always moulting for some reason. The Major himself would merely perch on the arm of a chair while the dogs gazed at him with bleary devotion from their cus.h.i.+ons. Sometimes, if a bark was heard in the street outside, they would give answering barks, though without moving an inch from their chairs. Dupigny had known few more strange experiences than that of sitting in the company of the silent, withdrawn Major towards the end of a winter afternoon and hearing those dogs erupting round him in the gloom.

'Eh bien! So all is up with the Major!' one might have thought in 1930, looking at him perched on the arm of a chair across his penumbrous, dog-strewn drawing-room. 'Nothing surely can save him now from the increasingly private comforts and exacting rules of his bachelor life.' One by one over the next five years while he, Dupigny, was again in Indo-China the dogs had dropped away and were not replaced. The Major, perhaps, was no longer very fond of dogs and had kept them mainly from a sense of duty, just as he had kept the drawing-room itself exactly as it used to be when his aunt was still alive. By this time, without a doubt, he had become a confirmed bachelor. The marriages of his contemporaries no longer filled him with such envy. He had begun to see that being married can have drawbacks, that being single can have advantages. So all is up with the Major!' one might have thought in 1930, looking at him perched on the arm of a chair across his penumbrous, dog-strewn drawing-room. 'Nothing surely can save him now from the increasingly private comforts and exacting rules of his bachelor life.' One by one over the next five years while he, Dupigny, was again in Indo-China the dogs had dropped away and were not replaced. The Major, perhaps, was no longer very fond of dogs and had kept them mainly from a sense of duty, just as he had kept the drawing-room itself exactly as it used to be when his aunt was still alive. By this time, without a doubt, he had become a confirmed bachelor. The marriages of his contemporaries no longer filled him with such envy. He had begun to see that being married can have drawbacks, that being single can have advantages.

Not, of course, that the Major had not continued to fall in love at regular intervals. But now he tended to fall in love with happily married women, the wives of his friends and thus, for a man of honour like himself, unattainable creatures who personified all the virtues, above all, the virtue of not being in a position to return his feelings. The love he bore them was of the chivalrous, selfless kind so fas.h.i.+onable among the British in late-Victorian and Edwardian times, perhaps because (selon l'hypothese Dupigny) it handily acknowledged the female principle in the universe without incommoding busy males with real women. Still, Dupigny had had to admit that his poor friend had a life which suited him very well, y compris les amours. y compris les amours.

Agreed, the Major's reward in these encounters was not the tumultuous one of illicit embraces between the sheets: it was the glance of grat.i.tude on a pure maternal brow, the running of a moustache as soft as ... blaireau blaireau, how d'you say? (badger? thank you) ... the running of a badger-soft moustache over fair knuckles, the reading of unspoken thoughts in bright eyes. These small moments, remembered late at night as he sprawled in his lonely bed smoking his pipe in a bedroom that smelled like a railway carriage (Fumeurs), were the Major's only but adequate reward.

If, however, perhaps hoping for a deeper relations.h.i.+p, the lady should pay him a visit one afternoon bringing her children (Dupigny had witnessed one such occasion) the Major would become cross. Young children would totter about the house knocking things over and trying to hug the elderly, malodorous dogs, themselves grown short-tempered with age. Older children would chase each other from room to room and would keep asking him if they could play with certain important possessions of his (a gramophone, a pair of Prussian binoculars, a steam-powered model boat or electric railway) without realizing that these objects could only be handled with elaborate ceremony and precautions. These children-accompanied sentimental visits, Dupigny surmised, had never failed to be disastrous, pa.s.sion-damping.

On such occasions, no doubt, faced with a terrifying glimpse of what a real marriage might entail, the Major could not help congratulating himself on his escape. A white marble statue of Venus, it was true, still glimmered, seductively unclothed, at the foot of his stairs. But having turned forty the Major must have reflected that by now he was over the worst. He had come through the years of emotional typhoons battered, certainly, but all in one piece. It was wonderful how a human being could adapt to his circ.u.mstances. The Major knew in his heart that he could not have endured marriage, the untidiness and confusion of it.

And so, there the Major had been, about 1935, fixed in his habits, apparently suspended in his celibacy like a chicken in aspic. But one day, abruptly, he was no longer satisfied: he had decided to give it all up, this comfortable life, to travel and see the world before he was finally too old. A man has only one life! How surprised Dupigny had been when one day he learned that the Major was making a voyage to Australia, and then to j.a.pan, even to visit him in Hanoi and later in Saigon! Why had he done this? Another love affair that had gone wrong? The Major never spoke of such things. Why had he then settled in Singapore, opportunely for himself as it now turned out? This was something which Dupigny had not understood. And neither, perhaps, had the Major!

Matthew and Dupigny, having finished their cigarettes, approached the entrance to the Mayfair Building: a little way into the compound a stiff, dignified old jaga jaga in khaki shorts and a yellow turban watched them sleepily from his in khaki shorts and a yellow turban watched them sleepily from his charpoy charpoy but all they could see of his face in the darkness was a copious white moustache and a white beard. Dupigny asked whether the Major was still in the bungalow. The but all they could see of his face in the darkness was a copious white moustache and a white beard. Dupigny asked whether the Major was still in the bungalow. The jaga jaga raised a skinny arm to point towards the building behind him. raised a skinny arm to point towards the building behind him.

'It seems the Major has been here all the time. Let us go and wish him good night.'

After the starlit compound the darkness on the verandah seemed almost complete. It was agreeably perfumed, however, by the smoke of a Havana cigar whose glowing tip Matthew had no difficulty in locating as it danced for a moment in fingers raised in greeting.

'Not yet in bed, Brendan? Old gentlemen must take care of themselves.'

'I'll be going to bed in a moment,' the Major said, but Matthew had already been informed that the Major, hara.s.sed by insomnia, was just as likely to sit here on the verandah smoking cigars until first light. 'Did you hear anything? Were there any military big-wigs there?'

'Brooke-Popham and a General. They appear confident.'

Matthew and Dupigny groped their way across the verandah to the Major's side. There Matthew collapsed with a shriek of bamboo on to a chaise-longue. How tired he was! What a lot had happened since he had last been in bed! 'Very soon now I shall go to bed,' he thought wearily. From where he sat he had a view of the Major's silhouette. He could see the outline of his 'badger-soft' moustache, recently outraged by Cheong's scissors. He could even see the corrugated wrinkles mounting the slope of the Major's worried brow, growing smoother as they reached the imperceptible line of hair neatly plastered down with water.

'What fools those men are!' exclaimed the Major, and the tip of his cigar glowed fiercely in the darkness. But after a moment he added humbly: 'Of course, they may know things that we don't.'

19.

At the end of the first week of December a little group of men wearing overalls or boiler-suits or simply shorts on account of the heat gathered one afternoon in the shade of the tamarind tree in the Mayfair's compound. They belonged to the Mayfair Auxiliary Fire Service unit (AFS for short) and they had been summoned, although today was Sunday, to an urgent practice. The morning newspaper had carried news of a convoy of unidentified transport s.h.i.+ps heading south from j.a.panese-occupied Indo-China and the Major, who was in charge of the Mayfair AFS unit, feared the worst. The Major, at the moment, was not under the tamarind tree but in the garage beside the house, struggling with a tarpaulin. Matthew, who had just been enrolled in the unit, was a.s.sisting him. There was no ventilation in the garage and the day's sun, beating down on the corrugated iron roof, had made it like an oven inside. Matthew had already been suffering from the heat: now he felt the perspiration running down his legs and collecting in his socks.

The Major had dragged the tarpaulin off a large box-shaped object which proved to be some sort of engine, gleaming with steel and bra.s.s pipes and fittings. Matthew stared at it blankly. It had two large dials on a sort of dashboard and, instead of wheels, two carrying-poles like a palanquin.

'It's a Coventry Victor,' declared the Major with pride. 'Brand new!'

'But what does it do?'

'It's a trailer-pump. The trailer is over there. I've had a bracket put on the back of my car so we can tow it about if need be. Give me a hand and we'll carry it outside. We're going to have a drill with it when our instructor gets here. He's an ex-London Fire Brigade man and when he's sober he knows his stuff ... which isn't always, unfortunately.'

Presently, the instructor arrived. He turned out to be a short, bald and red-faced man in his fifties called McMahon. After a lengthy altercation with the taxi-driver who had brought him he advanced swaying towards the Mayfair Building. The Major had explained to Matthew that Mr McMahon, like many firemen, had started life as a seaman. It became clear, however, as he collided with a bush, shouting, on his way round the house, that this was not the explanation of his rolling gait.

The Major had drawn up the members of the Mayfair AFS unit in a line beside the tennis court ready to be inspected by their instructor. They stood at ease, waiting uncertainly, while Mr McMahon weaved his way towards them, cursing. Apart from the Major himself, the unit consisted of Dupigny, a Mr Sen and a Mr Harris, both clerks who were occasionally lent to the Mayfair by Blackett and Webb (the former was Indian, the latter Eurasian), Mr Wu, a friendly Chinese businessman, the Chinese 'boy', Cheong, who had surprised the Major by volunteering and who, though his face remained perfectly impa.s.sive in every situation, had proved easily the most efficient of the recruits, Monty Blackett, who had volunteered (the lesser of two evils) to avoid conscription into the Local Defence Force but was still hoping to achieve, if not a complete dispensation, at least, a more agreeable position in Singapore's active or pa.s.sive defences, and finally, a handsome young man called Nigel Langfield, the son of Walter's arch-rival and enemy, Solomon Langfield: Nigel was wearing a very new blue boiler-suit with AFS prettily embroidered in red on one of its breast pockets; from time to time he would lower his nose to sniff the satisfying newcloth smell of this garment.

These would-be firemen eyed their instructor with concern as he waded towards them, as if through a swamp. Before reaching them, however, he unexpectedly changed course to embrace the trunk of another tree not far away. Then, with his arms still round the tree and still cursing, he slithered to the ground, eventually struggling around to use it as a back-rest.

'G.o.d help ye, y' blithering lot o' helpless b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!' he babbled, fighting for breath. 'Let's see another dry drill then, you perfumed bunch o' pansies or, G.o.d help ye, the fists'll be flyin' or me name's not McMahon! Get on with it ... A dry drill, I'm tellin' ye!'

'I thought we were going to do a wet drill today,' said the Major, looking dissatisfied. 'That's what you said last time.'

'This time I'm sayin' it's a dry drill, y'b.a.s.t.a.r.d, so hop to it and see that ye run the bleedin' hose out without a twist in it or ye'll catch it hot, I'm tellin' ye ...' time I'm sayin' it's a dry drill, y'b.a.s.t.a.r.d, so hop to it and see that ye run the bleedin' hose out without a twist in it or ye'll catch it hot, I'm tellin' ye ...'

'Well, we might just do one one,' said the Major, 'in order to get the feel of it before we do a wet drill. I'm afraid McMahon's not going to be much help to us today by the look of it,' he added in an undertone to the rest of the unit.

'I heard that, y' p.i.s.sin' old goat,' yelled McMahon, quivering with a fresh paroxysm of rage and struggling ineffectually to get to his feet, evidently with the intention of exacting retribution.

'Shut up or we'll bash your silly brains in,' said Monty languidly, sloping off in the direction of the bungalow.

'Look here, Monty, where are you you off to? We're just going to begin,' said the Major indignantly. off to? We're just going to begin,' said the Major indignantly.

'I'm just going to find an aspirin, old boy, if you don't mind.'

'Well, hurry up about it. I'll try and explain the basic drill to Matthew in the meantime.'

There were, the Major explained, two types of hose: suction hose for picking up water from an open source such as a ca.n.a.l or a river, and delivery hose, for relaying water to the fire. Suction hose had a wide diameter and was reinforced to keep it cylindrical; it also had wire strainers to prevent stones or rubbish being sucked up into the pump. 'Have you got that?'

'I think so. This other one, then, is the delivery hosepipe, is it?'

From under his tree McMahon shrieked with laughter. 'Hosepipe! He thinks he's a bleedin' gardener!' He thinks he's a bleedin' gardener!'

'Hm, I should have mentioned that, we say ”hose” rather than ”hosepipe”, and ropes are known as ”lines” and the rungs of a ladder are called ”rounds” ... I don't suppose it matters particularly, as we're just a scratch team, but McMahon seems to prefer it.'

Delivery hose, the Major continued, was wound flat on a revolving drum and came in fifty or a hundred-foot lengths with a diameter of two or three inches; at the business end there was a tapering bra.s.s tube called the 'branch', not the nozzle! The drill was that the number one man ran off in the direction of the fire with the branch, unreeling a length of hose as he went; meanwhile the number three man laid out another length of hose and dealt with the couplings. These couplings were what were known as 'male' and 'female', that was to say ...

'That fat pansy wouldn't know the difference if ye took up y'skirts and showed him!'

'That will do, McMahon,' said the Major sharply. He turned back to Matthew. 'The idea is that the male coupling plugs into the female on the previous length of hose. The male plugs into the standpipe, if that's where the water is coming from, or into the engine pump. Meanwhile the runner takes hold of the lugs on the ”female” end around which the delivery hose is normally wrapped and he uses them as an axle round which the roll of hose unwinds. Here, Nigel will give us a demonstration.'

Nigel obediently took the roll of hose and holding it a little way from his body went loping gracefully away with it, laying it down neatly on the turf behind him as he went.

'It's not as easy as it looks. Nigel's rather good at it.'

It was true. Everybody watched in admiration and even McMahon was temporarily silenced by this display of skill. There was still no sign of Monty so Cheong was sent to look for him. Meanwhile Mr Wu, who with Dupigny and Cheong had been tinkering with the engine, was called forward to show Matthew how to climb a ladder which had earlier been set up against the roof of the Mayfair.

'When climbing radder glasp lounds not side of radder,' explained Mr Wu to Matthew.

'What?'

'Glasp lungs!'

'Good heavens! You mean, your own? Or someone else's?'