‘How did you get around that?’
He gave me a boyish smile. ‘Servants protecting foreign property on behalf of the central government were responsible to the central government. When one of that government’s officials decided to inspect the property to see if the protectors were doing their duty, they’d better co-operate. Otherwise, they’d find themselves out on their ears or, more likely, in jail.’
‘So they co-operated.’
‘Yes. But they also resented and hated and wondered how to handle the interloper, this man who was suddenly giving them orders, making them work instead of resting up, sitting at the consul’s dinner table, sleeping in their consul’s bedroom. What would you have done in their place, Paul?’
‘Pretended you were the consul and tried to kill you with kindness, I expect.’
‘They could do that and they often did. But sometimes the effort seemed to cost them too much and then they’d try to redress the balance in their favour. That happened once when I was staying in a French consulate. I’d been to dinner with the official in charge of the port installations because I’d had business to do with him. He lived in a compound two minutes away, so, after an early dinner and a brief chat, I walked back to the consul’s house. You know how those places are arranged? Square lot of half a hectare maybe, high wall all around with barbed-wire on top as optional extra, house in the centre, separate servants’ quarters in back of compound, gap in the wall for gate, driveway from gate to house?’
‘I know.’
‘Well, when I got to the gate I found it unlocked. In that place and at that time, that alone would have given me pause. I also heard and saw movements inside. There was a moon, so I waited by the gate till my eyes had adjusted to the light and I could see what was going on. Have you met many French consuls, Paul?’
‘Not many, no.’
‘Those I’ve met haven’t, on the whole, been great hobbyists. There was one who was a bit of an ornithologist and made a hobby of his bird-photography, but I haven’t come across any who cultivated their gardens much, except career-wise and metaphorically. I think this particular consul may have had an English wife.’
‘You’ll have to tell me what you’re talking about, Mat. I won’t try to guess.’
‘That place had a rose garden in front of the house!’
‘Not a flower I care for much.’
‘But an English rose garden in Java, Paul. It was crazy. They were a crummy lot as you’d expect. Still, there they were, planted right after the Japs had pulled out in ‘forty-five, no doubt, and tended with care by Madame Consul until the new war came and the servants had had to take over. Now what I saw, as I stood in the darkness by the gate, was a couple of those servants, the two men, digging up the rose garden and burying something in it. Paul, what would you have thought they were burying at dead of night, eh?’
‘With you, a self-proclaimed government snooper, on the property? Small-arms I would say, or possibly the last of the old consular hoard of vacuum-packed Gauloises Bleues.’
‘Or ammunition, or stolen car-pans? Sure. As I stood there just outside the gate, watching and waiting for them to finish the job, I went through all those possibilities and more. I also realized that this had to be a one-off, amateur-night deal or they’d have had a boy out on watch in case I came back early. When at last they did finish and the rose bushes were all replanted, I had to move away a bit because then they remembered that they’d left the gate open and came over to lock up. I heard them giggling over something, but couldn’t hear what. Then they went off to their own quarters. As soon as they were out of the way, I let myself in and went to the house.’
‘Not stopping to look at the roses by moonlight?’
‘I wasn’t interested in the bloody roses, and neither would you have been. The trouble was that they’d taken the shovels they’d been using away with them. There was no electricity on at that time of night, so, with just my flashlight, all I could find in the house to use as a digging tool was a silver card-tray kept by the front door. In darkest Java with tray and flashlight! Are you with me?’
‘Out there in the rose garden digging up the consul’s cash-float box? Could be. I hope the silver tray stood up to it.’
‘That tray wasn’t solid silver,’ he said quickly; ‘it was plate.’ I hadn’t known it then, but Mat’s scout training instilled in him a respect for the property of others, apart from their money I mean, that has never left him. ‘Besides,’ he went on, ‘the soil was all loose where they’d been digging. I washed the tray carefully afterwards. There wasn’t a scratch on it.’
‘How about the consul’s cash box?’
He took a deep breath in order to regain lost calm before he answered.
‘What they’d buried there, Paul,’ he said solemnly, ‘was the entrails of a pig.’
Now I may not have known much, at that early stage, about his concern for the preservation of borrowed objects, or about any other by-products of his unusual education, but I had already learned that, if you let him adopt his preternaturally solemn tone with you without instantly taking counter-measures, he could become insufferably condescending. He had expected to surprise me, so I was very careful to look unsurprised.
‘How did you know they were a pig’s entrails?’ I demanded suspiciously. ‘They could have been a sheep’s or a cow’s.’
‘In Java?’
‘All right, an ox’s entrails maybe.’
‘They were a pig’s entrails. I know about such things, Paul. Take my word for it.’
‘Okay, I take your word. So what? Dried blood and bone meal are supposed to be good fertilizers. Why not pigs’ entrails? You said that the roses looked crummy. The poor men were simply anticipating your criticisms by feeding the things while they thought you were safely out of the way.’
‘And giggling while they did so?’
‘A cultural curiosity. Golden Bough stuff. The peasants of Java consider entrails highly amusing.’
I had been baiting him of course. He had now realized that, and didn’t like it. He gave me a long, bleak look before he spoke again.
‘They were there,’ he said slowly, ‘to cast a spell, to render me helpless in their filthy hands.’
‘Oh.’
Once he had started on spells, there was no point in trying to comment, or interrupt. He knew what he was talking about and he liked playing teacher. If he sounded on those occasions as if he were explaining the facts of life for the last time to a strangely backward adolescent, that was probably another hangover from his Fijian scouting days.
‘Those servants knew that the rose garden was of the greatest importance to the owner. That I wasn’t the real owner made no difference. As the person in command of the place, even temporarily, I had taken on the attributes of the owner, his strengths and, above all, his weaknesses.
I was dangerous to them because I could put in spiteful reports about the number of illegals they kept hidden in that compound paying squeeze for a patch of roof and a place of refuge from authority. I was a nuisance to them because I made work for them to which they had become unaccustomed. I messed things up, I wanted food, my bed made, my clothes dhobied. They wanted me out of there but couldn’t tell me to go. So what was there for them to do? Only one thing. Reduce my capacity for mischief to a minimum. How? Let the spirits of the dead render me impotent. By what means? Let them emasculate me through my rose garden. Let the embodiment of the most aggrieved and jealous spirits be placed in that earth where I was vulnerable. Got it?’
‘Mm.’
‘So what do you do when hostile spirits have been put in to subvert and suborn you? You turn them around, make double agents of them, that’s what you do. Hah! Those offal buriers didn’t know the man they’d challenged. They soon learned. Next morning at breakfast, just to start with. The head man can’t wait to run tests, of course, to see if the spell had started to work. So, he changes what they serve me for breakfast. I’d ordered papaya. He brings me bananas. Moment of truth! If I don’t notice because I don’t remember what I ordered, or if, having noticed and complained, I still accept the substitution, then the spell’s beginning to work. I’m spooked and they’re getting the upper hand. If, though, I do notice and do complain and tell him to take the goddam bananas away and bring me papaya, then maybe they’ll have to wait. Until the next meal, that is, to test again with my food or to see what happens when they starch a shirt so hard that I can’t do up the buttons. Maybe the day is adverse. Maybe these entrails need to get a bit riper before the spirits feel comfortable in them. Got to give it time, eh?’