Americans were always bowled over by the story of the Englishman whose pecker is accidentally cut off. After a painful month he finally decides to see a doctor, who says he knows how to sew the thing back on. “Just hand it over and I’ll see to it straightway.” The Englishman slaps his pockets, says, “I’ve got the damned thing here somewhere,” and gives the doctor a huge cigar. “This is a cigar,” says the perplexed doctor, and “My word,” says the Englishman, “I must have smoked my cock!”
Sometimes I clowned around, like making a great show of ordering cherries in brandy, simply to say, “To tell the truth, I hate these cherries, but I like the spirit in which they’re given!” So, even without the match tricks and brain twisters, someone was always buying me a drink and saying, “You’re a card.” And in clubs where I was not a member, fellers said, “We haven’t seen you lately — missed you at the film show,” and “Don’t forget the A.G.M. next week, about time we tackled that gatecrashers’ clause”; eventually, a feller would ask, “Say, Jack, what’s your line of work?”
“Me? I’m in ship chandling.” I never said I was a water clerk.
“Odd, that,” would be the reply.
“I know exactly what you mean,” I’d say. “But the way I figure it, this business could use a little streamlining. Methods haven’t changed since Raffles’s time, and by God neither have some of the groceries they’re flogging, from the taste of them! Shops haven’t been swept in years, bread’s as hard as old Harry, weevils in the rice — mind you, I’ve got nothing against our Asiatic brothers. It’s just as you say, they work like dogs. On the other hand, your Indian is never really happy handling meat — but you can’t hold their religion against them, can you?”
“One can’t, I suppose. But still—”
“And your Chinese ship chandler — he’ll give you a turd and tell you it’s an orchid. Shall I tell you what I saw one day in a Chinese shop? This’ll kill you—”
The feller would be agreeing with me and putting his oar in from time to time. I’d tell my valve story and he’d cap it with a better and terrifying one about defective life jackets or wormy provisions, all the while working up the indignation to change ship chandlers.
My most effective selling ploy, which I used just before mealtimes, when conversations always got around to food, was my English breakfast. This never failed. The English, I had discovered, had a weakness for large breakfasts; it might have had a literary source — a Dickens character having a beefsteak with his tea — or a tradition begun on those cold mornings when the Thames used to freeze over, or war rationing. Whatever the reason, it was an inspired way of getting a contract.
I hit on this a few months after I began ship chandling in Singapore, with a feller from the Victoria Shipping Lines. It was on the verandah of the Singapore Cricket Club, on a Saturday just before tiffin. The feller was sitting beside me in a wicker chair and we were watching some ladies bowling on the grass. This form of bowling was exactly like the Italian game bocce, which my father played in an alley in the North End every Sunday afternoon. It was the only game I knew well, and I was commenting on the ladies’ match to the feller on my right. “Gotta have more left-hand side… Not enough legs on that one… Kissed it… Never make it… She’s out for blood — it’s going like a demon—” The ladies took a rest. I turned to the feller and said, “Seems there was this Texan—”
“Very amusing,” he said, when I finished, his understatement contradicting the honking laughter he couldn’t suppress. “Have a drink?”
“Thank you.”
“Actually, I’m hungry,” he said. “No time for breakfast this morning. Ruins the day, don’t you find?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “That’s what I try to tell these skippers I deal with. Give a seaman a slap-up breakfast and he’ll do a fair day’s work. Cut down on his lunch, but don’t ever tamper with that breakfast of his!”
“My idea of a really topnotch breakfast is kippers, porridge oats, eggs, and a pot of tea — hot and strong.” He smacked his lips.
“You’re forgetting your fruit juice — juices are very important. And choice of cereals, some bubble and squeak, huge rashers of bacon, or maybe a beefsteak and chips, stack of toast, hot crumpets, marmalade. Boy!” The feller was nodding in agreement and swallowing. “It’s a funny thing, you know,” I went on. “These ship chandlers don’t supply fresh juice — oh, no! Course the fresh is cheaper and the fruit grows locally. They give you this tinned stuff.”
“You can taste the metal.”
“Sure you can!”
“Potatoes make a nice breakfast,” he said, still swallowing.
“Hashbrowns — fry ’em up crisp and hot and serve them with gouts of H. P. Sauce.”
“I’m famished,” he said, and looked at his watch.
“Me too,” I said. “I wouldn’t mind a big English breakfast right this minute. I envy the seamen on some of the ships I supply.”
“All the same,” he said, “it sounds an expensive meal.”
“Not on your nelly,” I said, and quoted some prices, adding, “I buy in bulk, see, so I can pass the savings on to the customer. I still make a profit — everyone gains.”
“It sounds frightfully reasonable.”
“And that’s not all—”
Our drinks arrived, and the ladies resumed their bowling. The feller said, “I’m just the teeniest bit browned-off with my own chandler. What did you say was the name of your firm?”
I explained Hing’s name on my card by saying he was a partner who came in handy when we were dealing with Chinese accounts — I’d known him for years. “Like I say, we’re an unusual firm.” I winked. “Think about it. We’ll see your men get a good breakfast. Oh, and if there’s anything else you require—anything at all—just give me a tinkle and I’ll see what I can scare up. Cheers.”
He rang the next day. He offered me a chandling contract for three freighters, a couple of tankers, and two steamships of modest tonnage that did the Singapore-North Borneo run. At the end of the conversation he hesitated briefly and murmured, “Yesterday, um, you said anything, didn’t you?”
“You bet your boots I did.”
“Um, I was wondering if you could help me out with something that’s just cropped up this morning. One of our freighters is in from Madras. Crew’s feeling a bit Bolshie about going off tomorrow to the Indonesian ports. We’d like to cheer them up a bit, um, give them a bit of fun without letting them ashore. Are you in the picture?”
“Leave it to me,” I said. “How many guys are you trying to… amuse?”
“Well, it’s the Richard Everett. She’s got, say, twenty-three able seamen, and—”
“You’ve come to the right man,” I said. “How about a coffee? I’ll explain then.”
“Lunch,” he insisted, pleased. “At the club. And thanks, thanks awfully.”
4
AT THAT PERIOD in my life, my first years in Singapore, I enjoyed a rare kind of happiness, like the accidental discovery of renewal, singing in my heart and feet, that comes with infatuation. It was true power: mercy and boldness. I felt brave. I didn’t belittle it or try to justify it, and I never wondered about its queer origin. I was converted to buoyancy, and rising understood survivaclass="underline" the surprise of the marooned man who has built his first fire. I had turned forty without pain, and until Desmond Frogget came I was the youngest drinker in the Bandung.