Ah King (27 page)

“Well,” she said at last, “I must be running away. I’ve had a lovely lunch. It’s been fun meeting you, George. Thanks so much.”

He put her into a taxi and taking off his hat walked down Piccadilly by himself. He thought her quite a pleasant, amusing woman: he laughed to think that he had ever been madly in love with her. There was a smile on his lips when he spoke again to Tom Saffary.

“She was a damned good-looking girl when I married her. That was the trouble. Though, of course, if she hadn’t been I’d never have married her. They were all after her like flies round a honey-pot. We used to have awful rows. And at last I caught her out. Of course I divorced her.”

“Of course.”

“Yes, but I know I was a damned fool to do it.” He leaned forward. “My dear Saffary, I know now that if I’d had any sense I’d have shut my eyes. She’d have settled down and made me an excellent wife.”

He wished he were able to explain to his visitor how grotesque it had seemed to him when he sat and talked with that jolly, comfortable, and good-humoured woman that he should have made so much fuss about what now seemed to him to matter so little.

“But one has one’s honour to think of,” said Saffary.

“Honour be damned. One has one’s happiness to think of. Is one’s honour really concerned because one’s wife hops into bed with another man? We’re not crusaders, you and I, or Spanish grandees. I
liked
my wife. I don’t say I haven’t had other women. I have. But she had just that something that none of the others could give me. What a fool I was to throw away what I wanted more than anything in the world because I couldn’t enjoy exclusive possession of it!”

“You’re the last man I should ever have expected to hear speak like that.”

George Moon smiled thinly at the embarrassment that was so clearly expressed on Saffary’s fat troubled face.

“I’m probably the first man you’ve heard speak the naked truth,” he retorted.

“Do you mean to say that if it were all to do over again you would act differently?”

“If I were twenty-seven again I suppose I should be as big a fool as I was then. But if I had the sense I have now I’ll tell you what I’d do if I found my wife had been unfaithful to me. I’d do just what you did last night: I’d give her a damned good hiding and let it go at that.”

“Are you asking me to forgive Violet?”

The Resident shook his head slowly and smiled.

“No. You’ve forgiven her already. I’m merely advising you not to cut off your nose to spite your face.”

Saffary gave him a worried look. It disconcerted him to know that this cold precise man should see in his heart emotions which seemed so unnatural to himself that he thrust them out of his consciousness.

“You don’t know the circumstances,” he said. “Knobby and I were almost like brothers. I got him his job. He owed everything to me. And except for me Violet might have gone on being a governess for the rest of her life. It seemed such a waste; I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. If you know what I mean, it was pity that first made me take any notice of her. Don’t you think it’s a bit thick that when you’ve been thoroughly decent with people they should go out of their way to do the dirty on you? It’s such awful ingratitude.”

“Oh, my dear boy, one mustn’t expect gratitude. It’s a thing that no one has a right to. After all, you do good because it gives you pleasure. It’s the purest form of happiness there is. To expect thanks for it is really asking too much. If you get it, well, it’s like a bonus on shares on which you’ve already received a dividend; it’s grand, but you mustn’t look upon it as your due.”

Saffary frowned. He was perplexed. He could not quite make it out that George Moon should think so oddly about things that it had always seemed to him there were no two ways of thinking about. After all there were limits. I mean, if you had any sense of decency you had to behave like a tuan. There was your own self-respect to think of. It was funny that George Moon should give reasons that looked so damned plausible for doing something that, well, damn it, you had to admit you’d be only too glad to do if you could see your way to it. Of course George Moon was queer. No one ever quite understood him.

“Knobby Clarke is dead, Saffary. You can’t be jealous of him any more. No one knows a thing except you and me and your wife, and tomorrow I’m going away for ever. Why don’t you let bygones be bygones?”

“Violet would only despise me.”

George Moon smiled and, unexpectedly on that prim, fastidious face, his smile had a singular sweetness.

“I know her very little. I always thought her a very nice woman. Is she as detestable as that?”

Saffary gave a start and reddened to his ears.

“No, she’s an angel of goodness. It’s me who’s detestable for saying that of her.” His voice broke and he gave a little sob. “God knows I only want to do the right thing.”

“The right thing is the kind thing.”

Saffary covered his face with his hands. He could not curb the emotion that shook him.

“I seem to be giving, giving all the time, and no one does a God-damned thing for me. It doesn’t matter if my heart is broken, I must just go on.” He drew the back of his hand across his eyes and sighed deeply. “I’ll forgive her.”

George Moon looked at him reflectively for a little.

“I wouldn’t make too much of a song and dance about it, if I were you,” he said. “You’ll have to walk warily. She’ll have a lot to forgive too.”

“Because I hit her, you mean? I know, that was awful of me.”

“Not a bit. It did her a power of good. I didn’t mean that. You’re behaving generously, old boy, and, you know, one needs a devil of a lot of tact to get people to forgive one one’s generosity. Fortunately women are frivolous and they very quickly forget the benefits conferred upon them. Otherwise, of course, there’d be no living with them.”

Saffary looked at him open-mouthed.

“Upon my word you’re a rum “un, Moon,” he said. “Sometimes you seem as hard as nails and then you talk so that one thinks you’re almost human, and then, just as one thinks one’s misjudged you and you have a heart after all, you come out with something that just shocks one. I suppose that’s what they call a cynic’

“I haven’t deeply considered the matter,” smiled George Moon, “but if to look truth in the face and not resent it when it’s unpalatable, and take human nature as you find it, smiling when it’s absurd and grieved without exaggeration when it’s pitiful, is to be cynical, then I suppose I’m a cynic. Mostly human nature is both absurd and pitiful, but if life has taught you tolerance you find in it more to smile at than to weep.”

When Tom Saffary left the room the Resident lit himself with deliberation the last cigarette he meant to smoke before tiffin. It was a new role for him to reconcile an angry husband with an erring wife and it caused him a discreet amusement. He continued to reflect upon human nature. A wintry smile hovered upon his thin and pallid lips. He recalled with what interest in the dry creeks of certain places along the coast he had often stood and watched the Jumping Johnnies. There were hundreds of them sometimes, from little things of a couple of inches long to great fat fellows as long as your foot. They were the colour of the mud they lived in. They sat and looked at you with large round eyes and then with a sudden dash buried themselves in their holes. It was extraordinary to see them scudding on their flappers over the surface of the mud. It teemed with them. They gave you a fearful feeling that the mud itself was mysteriously become alive and an atavistic terror froze your heart when you remembered that such creatures, but gigantic and terrible, were once the only inhabitants of the earth. There was something uncanny about them, but something amusing too. They reminded you very much of human beings. It was quite entertaining to stand there for half an hour and observe their gambols.

George Moon took his topee off the peg and not displeased with life stepped out into the sunshine.

C
APTAIN BREDON
was good-natured. When Angus Munro, the Curator of the museum at Kuala Solor, told him that he had advised Neil MacAdam, his new assistant, on his arrival at Singapore to put up at the Van Dyke Hotel, and asked him to see that the lad got into no mischief during the few days he must spend there, he said he would do his best. Captain Bredon commanded the
Sultan Ahmed,
and when he was at Singapore always stayed at the Van Dyke. He had a Japanese wife and kept a room there. It was his home. When he got back after his fortnight’s trip along the coast of Borneo the Dutch manager told him that Neil had been there for two days. The boy was sitting in the little dusty garden of the hotel reading old numbers of
The Straits Times.
Captain Bredon took a look at him first and then went up.

“You’re MacAdam, aren’t you?”

Neil rose to his feet, flushed to the roots of his hair, and answered shyly: “I am.”

“My name’s Bredon. I’m skipper of the
Sultan Ahmed.
You’re sailing with me next Tuesday. Munro asked me to look after you. What about a stengah? I suppose you’ve learned what that means by now.”

“Thank you very much, but I don’t drink.”

He spoke with a broad Scots accent.

“I don’t blame you. Drink’s been the ruin of many a good man in this country.”

He called the Chinese boy and ordered himself a double whisky and a small soda.

“What have you been doing with yourself since you got in?”

“Walking about.”

“There’s nothing much to see in Singapore.”

“I’ve found plenty.”

Of course the first thing he had done was to go to the museum. There was little that he had not seen at home, but the fact that those beasts and birds, those reptiles, moths, butterflies, and insects were native to the country excited him. There was one section devoted to that part of Borneo of which Kuala Solor was the capital, and since these were the creatures that for the next three years would chiefly concern him, he examined them with attention. But it was outside, in the streets, that it was most thrilling, and except that he was a grave and sober young man he would have laughed aloud with joy. Everything was new to him. He walked till he was footsore. He stood at the corner of a busy street and wondered at the long line of rickshaws and the little men between the shafts running with dogged steps. He stood on a bridge over a canal and looked at the sampans wedged up against one another like sardines in a tin. He peered into the Chinese shops in Victoria Road where so many strange things were sold. Bombay merchants, fat and exuberant, stood at their shop doors and sought to sell him silks and tinsel jewellery. He watched the Tamils, pensive and forlorn, who walked with a sinister grace, and the bearded Arabs, in white skull-caps, who bore themselves with scornful dignity. The sun shone upon the varied scene with hard, acrid brilliance. He was confused. He thought it would take him years to find his bearings in this multi-coloured and excessive world.

After dinner that night Captain Bredon asked him if he would like to go round the town.

“You ought to see a bit of life while you’re here,” he said.

They stepped into rickshaws and drove to the Chinese quarter. The Captain, who never drank at sea, had been making up for his abstinence during the day. He was feeling good. The rickshaws stopped at a house in a side street and they knocked at the door. It was opened and they passed through a narrow passage into a large room with benches all round it covered with red plush. A number of women were sitting about-French, Italian, and American. A mechanical piano was grinding out harsh music and a few couples were dancing. Captain Bredon ordered drinks. Two or three women, waiting for an invitation, gave them inviting glances.

“Well, young feller, is there anyone you fancy here?” the Captain asked facetiously.

“To sleep with, d’you mean? No.”

“No white girls where you’re going, you know.”

“Oh, well.”

“Like to go an’ see some natives?”

“I don’t mind.”

The Captain paid for the drinks and they strolled on. They went to another house. Here the girls were Chinese, small and dainty, with tiny feet and hands like flowers, and they wore suits of flowered silk. But their painted faces were like masks. They looked at the strangers with black derisive eyes. They were strangely inhuman.

“I brought you here because I thought you ought to see the place,” said Captain Bredon, with the air of a man doing his bounden duty, “but just look-see is all. They don’t like us for some reason. In some of these Chinese joints they won’t even let a white man in. Fact is, they say we stink. Funny, ain’t it? They say we smell of corpses.”

“We?”

“Give me Japs,” said the Captain. “They’re fine. My wife’s a Jap, you know.

You come along with me and I’ll take you to a place where they have Japanese girls, and if you don’t see something you like there I’m a Dutchman.”

Their rickshaws were waiting and they stepped into them. Captain Bredon gave a direction and the boys started off. They were let into the house by a stout middle-aged Japanese woman, who bowed low as they entered. She took them into a neat, clean room furnished only with mats on the floor; they sat down and presently a little girl came in with a tray on which were two bowls of pale tea. With a shy bow she handed one to each of them. The Captain spoke to the middle-aged woman and she looked at Neil and giggled. She said something to the child, who went out, and presently four girls tripped in. They were sweet in their kimonos, with the shining black hair artfully dressed; they were small and plump, with round faces and laughing eyes. They bowed low as they came in and with good manners murmured polite greetings. Their speech sounded like the twittering of birds. Then they knelt, one on each side of the two men, and charmingly flirted with them. Captain Bredon soon had his arms round two slim waists. They all talked nineteen to the dozen. They were very gay. It seemed to Neil that the Captain’s girls were mocking him, for their gleaming eyes were mischievously turned towards him, and he blushed. But the other two cuddled up to him, smiling, and spoke in Japanese as though he understood every word they said. They seemed so happy and guileless that he laughed. They were very attentive. They handed him the bowl so that he should drink his tea, and then took it from him so that he should not have the trouble of holding it. They lit his cigarette for him and one put out a small, delicate hand to take the ash so that it should not fall on his clothes. They stroked his smooth face and looked with curiosity at his large young hands. They were as playful as kittens.